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ADDRESSES 



ON THE 



DEATH OF HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, 



DELIVERED IN THE 



SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 



TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1861, 



WASHINGTON : 

€K)VEIINJLENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1861. 



ADDRESSES 



DEATH OF HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



DELIVERED IN THE 



SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 



TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1861 




WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1861. 



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IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, 

Tuesday, Juli/ 16, 1861. 

Rcaolved, That tliere be printed and bound, under the direction 
of the Committee on Printing, twenty thousand copies of tlie 
Obituary Addresses delivered in the Senate and House on the death 
of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, for the use of the Members of 
this House. 

Attest : 

EM. ETHERIDGE, 

Clerli. 



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ADDRESSES 



ON THE 



DEATH OF HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Tuesday, July 9, 18G1. 



Address of Mr. Trumbull, of lUlnois. 

Mr. President : At tlie close of the last day in the 
month of May, 1861, on entering the city of Chicago 
after a brief visit to this place, I was informed by a 
friend who met me at the depot that my colleague in 
this body, Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, was dying, and 
would not probaljly survive an hour. As I approached 
the Tremont House, in which he lay, I found the side- 
walks and the vestibule of the hotel thronged with 
people anxiously inquiring after the condition of the 
dying man. The next morning it was some relief to 
know that he was still alive, thouoh it was said with 
little hope of a recovery. He continued in this condi- 
tion the whole of that day and the next, when the 
public began to entertain expectations of his restoration 
to health. The fears and hopes of the immediate 
attendants, friends, and relatives, who watched over him 
during those awful hours of suspense, and till nine 



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OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



o'clock on tlie momiiig of the 3d clay of June, when 
he expired, I have no disposition, had I the power, to 
portray. The solemn dnty of announcing my late col- 
league's decease imposes upon me no such obligation; 
and God grant that the wounds then inflicted may not 
he opened afresh. 

Mr. Douglas was born at Brandon, Vermont, April 
23, 1813, being but forty-eight years of age at the time 
of his decease. He was descended from Puritan ances- 
tors by both his parents. Of one — his father — he was 
bereft in infancy. His mother still survives. After 
acquiring such an education as could be obtained at the 
common school and the academy, not having the means 
to perfect it by a collegiate course, at the early age of 
twenty he emigrated to the State of Illinois, where he 
taught school for a short time, and, in 1834, was ad- 
mitted to the bar to practice law. In 1835 he was 
made State's attorney; and from that day till the day 
of his death was almost constantly engaged in the 
public service of either the State or the Nation. He 
held the offices of State's attorney, representative in 
the legislature, secretary of state, and justice of the 
supreme court in the State of Illinois, and also that of 
register of the land office at Springfield, in that State, 
by appointment from j\Ir. Van Buren, before he entered 
the Councils of the Nation as a representative in the 
other branch of Congress, in 1843. 

He wa^ three times elected by the people to the 
House of Representatives, and thrice by the legislature 
of his State to a seat In this body ; and was continuously 
a member of one House or the other, from his first 
entry, in 1843, till his death — four years of his last sena- 



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HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



torial term still remainmg unexpired. From this brief 
history, it appears that Judge Douglas devoted more 
than half his life, and all the years of his manhood, to 
the public service; and so prominent was the part he 
took in public aifairs, so intimate the connection between 
his own rise and fame and the progress and renown of 
his State and the Nation, that the history of the one 
would be incomplete without that of the other. No 
great public movement has taken place since he entered 
public life which has not felt the influence of his will 
and his intellect ; perhaps no one man since the govern- 
ment began ever exercised a greater influence over the 
masses of the people than he. No one ever gathered 
around him more devoted followers or more enthusiastic 
admirers, who were willing to do and dare more for 
another, than were his friends for him. 

What this charm was which so linked the popular 
heart to him that it never faltered even under circum- 
stances apparently the most discouraging, seems almost 
mysterious. This feeling of attachment followed him 
to the grave, and was never more manifest than after 
his decease, when he had become alike indifterent to 
the adulation of friends or the censure of enemies, and 
when his power had forever departed either to reward 
the one or punish the other. It was then, if ever, as 
his body lay lifeless in the city of Chicago, that the 
true feeling of a people would manifest itself; and it 
did manifest itself, not only there, but throughout the 
Nation, to an extent scarcely, if ever, witnessed since 
the death of the Father of his Country. The badges 
of mourning were seen displayed not only from the 
pubhc buildings and the mansions of the rich, but the 



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cottages of the poor, the carts of the workmen, and the 
implements of the laborer, were everywhere to be seen 
draped with the habihments of woe, all the more tonch- 
ing as they were simple and plain. The people's flivorite 
in life, he was followed by their lamentations in death. 

But Judge Douglas possessed not only the power of 
fascinating the masses; he was a marked man wherever 
he went and with whomsoever he associated. No matter 
whether as a lawyer at the bar; as a judge on the 
bench ; at an agricultural society, where the skilled in 
mechanic and industrial pursuits were assembled; at 
some college commencement, where the learned were 
convened ; in the other House of Congress, in the midst 
of the tumult and commotion of its most excited de- 
l^ates ; in this more deliberative body, or before the 
popular assembly of the people ; wherever he appeared, 
he always shone conspicuous. Pie was one of the few 
men who have proved themselves equal to every emer- 
gency in which they have been called upon to act. I 
remember well when he was transferred from the House 
of Eepresentatives to the Senate ; his enemies predicted 
and his friends feared that his talents were not fitted 
for this body, and that he would be unable to sustain 
the reputation he had acquired in the more popular 
branch. He entered here when the great men whose 
talents and learning and eloquence have shed an undying 
lustre on the American Senate — when Clay, "Webster, 
Benton, and Calhoun, in the vigor of manhood, full of 
^\'isdom and experience — were still here, and proved 
himself no mean compeer of either. His speech of 
1850, wherein he met and refuted the positions of the 
great Carolinian, upon the very points which have been 




made tlie pretexts of the southern rebeUion, was per- 
haps the greatest effort of his Hfe. 

The distmguishmg characteristics of Judge Douglas, 
which enabled him to cope successfully with the greatest 
intellects of the age, were fearlessness, quickness of 
apprehension, a strong will, and indomitable energy. 
He knew no such word as fail. He had full confidence 
in himself, and of his ability to accomplish whatever he 
undertook. In controversy he was unsurpassed, and 
without pretension either to accomphshed scholarship 
or eloquence, there was a fullness in his voice, an 
earnestness in his manner, a directness in his argument, 
and a determination in his every look and action, which 
never failed to command attention ; and, often electri- 
fying the multitude, would elicit unbounded applause. 
This crowded Chamber has often been witness of the 
delight with which the multitude hung upon his words. 

Of the political course of Judge Douglas, and its 
effect on the country, it does not become me to speak ; 
but I may be permitted to say, that when a portion of 
the Opposition to his Administration assumed the posi- 
tion of armed resistance to its authority, and attempted 
by force to dismember the Republic, he at once took 
sides with his country. His course had much to do in 
producing that unanimity in support of the government 
which is now seen throughout the loyal States. The 
sublime spectacle of twenty million people rising as 
one man in vindication of constitutional liberty and free 
government, when assailed by misguided rebels and 
plotting traitors, is to a considerable extent due to his 
efforts. His magnanimous and patriotic course in this 
trying hour of his country's destiny was the crowning 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



act of his life. All liis life-long a devoted partisan of 
the Democratic faith, he did not hesitate, when his 
country was in peril chiefly from those who had formerly 
been his political associates, to give his powerful support 
and the aid of his great influence to the government, 
thou^di controlled by political adversaries. If in thus 
discharging his duty Judge Douglas manifested a dis- 
interestedness, a magnanimity, and a patriotism which 
entitle him to credit, it is but just to say that he was 
met by his political opponents in a similar spirit. Per- 
haps the highest compliment ever paid him, and one 
which few statesmen have ever received, was that ex- 
tended to him by the legislature of Illinois on his return 
to the State after the close of the last session of the 
Senate. That body, controlled in both its branches by 
his political adversaries, unanimously invited him to ad- 
dress them on the condition of the country ; and nobly 
did he respond to the invitation. His address delivered 
on that occasion, which, by order of the legislature, was 
extensively circulated through the State, w^ill ever re- 
main an enduring monument to his fame, and an example 
worthy of all imitation of the sacrifice of pride to prin- 
ciple, of self to country, and of party to patriotism. 

In social life Judge Douglas was genial and attractive. 
Open, frank, ana generous almost to a fault, he never 
failed to exercise a large influence over all with whom 
he came in contact ; and few men have ever had more 
numerous or more devoted personal friends. 

Such were some of the characteristics of our departed 
brother. Inheriting neither wealth nor position from 
an illustrious ancestry, he acquired both by the active, 
energetic, laborious, and never-ceasing use of those 



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HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



noble faculties with which he was endowed by the 
Great Author of all ; and if the wealth he at one time 
possessed does not remain to those who were dependent 
on him, it is because the energies of his great mind 
were devoted rather to the country and to the whole 
people than to providing for his own. Laboring under 
the defects of an imperfect education in early life, his 
industry and his energy supplied the want. He was 
emphatically a self-made man ; and the history of his 
life affords a striking illustration of what industry and 
energy, united with a strong will, can accomplish. 

But that iron will which had so often met and over- 
come obstacles was compelled to yield at last to the 
King of Terrors; for it is appointed unto man once to 
die. Only a few months ago Judge Douglas, in vigor- 
orous health, went forth from this Chandler to rally his 
countrymen to the support of the Constitution and the 
laws, and then to die — to die at the very zenith of his 
fame, when a whole loyal people, forgetting past political 
ties, stood ready to do him honor. His death, in the 
full vigor of pianhood, should admonish us who are left 
that here we have no abiding place ; it may be not even 
for the brief periods for which we are chosen members 
of this body. 

Mr. Douglas was not a professor of religion in the 
sense of being attached to any particular church ; but 
in his will, executed several years before his decease, 
after providing for his worldly affairs, he says : "I commit 
my soul to God, and ask the prayers of the good for 
His divine blessing;" thus leaving on record the evidence 
of his trust in the Supreme Ruler of the world. He . 
leaves surviving him a widow, and two children by a 



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OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



former marriage. Into tlie domestic circle broken l)y liis 
departure I do not propose to enter, nor to attempt by any 
poor words of mine to administer consolation to those 
who were bound to him by the closest of ties. How 
unutterable must be the anguish of the aged mother, 
the sister, the children, and the bosom companion of him 
whose departure has clothed a wdiole nation in mourn- 
ing! I can only point them to Him who has promised 
to be a father to the fatherless and the widow's God. 

On the 17th day of June last all that remained of 
our departed brother was interred near the city of 
Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan, whose pure 
waters, often lashed into fury by contending elements, 
are a fitting memento of the stormy and boisterous 
political tumults through which the great popular orator 
so often passed. There the people, whose idol he was, 
will erect a monument to his memory; and there, in 
the soil of the State which so long, without interruption, 
and never to a greater extent than at the moment of 
his death, gave him her confidence, let his remains re- 
pose so long as free government shall last, and the 
Constitution he loved shall endure. 

I oifer the following resolutions : 

Resolved, That the members of the Senate, from a sincere desire 
of showing every mark of respect due to the memory of Hon. 
Stephen A. Douglas, deceased, late a Senator from the State of 
Illinois, will go into mourning by wearing crape on the left arm for 
thirty days. 

Resolved, unanimously. That, as an additional mark of respect 
for the memory of Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, the Senate do now 
adjourn. 

Ordered, That the Secretary communicate these resolutions to 
the House of Representatives. 



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HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



11 



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Address of Mr. McDougall, of CaUfornicL 

Mr. President: I received the first intelligence of 
tlie decease of the late Senator from Illinois as the pilot 
came on board our ship on my recent arrival off the 
liarbor of New York. The universal and solemn exhi- 
bition of the profoundest sorrow on the part of all the 
companions of my voyage, embracing men of all classes, 
all opinions, and all sections, fully showed that the dead 
Senator had filled a large place in the heart of the 
American people. All seemed deeply to feel that 
another of our great men — one of those who had most 
and best illustrated our republican institutions — had left 
us forever for the companionship of his fathers ; gone, 
too, at a time when his great qualities for counsel and 
conduct were most needed by his country. 

But as, powerless for the moment to resist the tide of 
emotions I bowed my head in silent grief, it came to 
me that the Senator had lived to witness the opening of 
the present unholy war upon our government; that, 
witnessing it from the capitol of his State, as his highest 
and best position, he had sent forth a war cry worthy 
of that Douglass who, as ancient legends tell, with the 
welcome of the knightly Andalusian king, was told: 

"Take tliou the leading of the van, 
And charge the Moors amain; 
There is not such a lance as thine 
In all the hosts of Spain." 

Those trumpet notes, with a continuous swell, are 
sounding still throuo:hout all the borders of our land. 



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I heard them upon the mountains and in the valleys of 
the far State from whence I come. They have commu- 
nicated faith and strength to millions. 

He lived to witness his great appeal to a nation of 
freemen answered by unnumbered legions of patriotic 
men, and to feel and understand, with a confident assur- 
ance, that the mad assault made by misguided men upon 
the integrity of our Union, instead of resulting in dis- 
union and anarchy, would establish our institutions upon 
deeper and firmer foiuidations, and leave a certain guar- 
antee of peace, iil)erty, and unity to our children and 
children's children to remote generations. He lived to 
have, by the majesty and power of his last great effort, 
risen above the reach of malice or detraction, and to 
have secured for his memory the love and admiration 
of all men who love freedom here, everywhere, and 
forever. I ceased to grieve for Douglas. The last 
voice of the dead Douglas I felt to be stronger than 
the voice of multitudes of living men. 

While paying the tribute of my respect to the 
memory of Mr. Douglas, I prefer speaking simply of 
the man as I knew him. The record of his public life 
is a part of the written history of our country. 

It is now twenty-four years since I first met Mr, 
Douglas ; he then a young lawyer of established repu- 
tation for ability; I about attempting success in the 
same profession. Of the same political opinions, en- 
gaged in the same pursuits, and of similar social rela- 
tions, from the first we became friends. It is to me a 
matter of sincere satisfaction that I am able to reflect 
that that friendship continued, without a single interrup- 
tion, for near a quarter of a century, and until the Great 



Ruler severed it, to be renewed, I trust, in the land of 
spirits. 

At a very early period Mr. Douglas turned his 
attention to public affiiirs ; and I soon learned to place 
great reliance upon his sagacity and judgment. As 
years passed by that confidence increased ; and if 
among the men I have Ivuown in ]3ublic life I have 
trusted him most, I can at the same time say I knew 
him best. 

That he possessed commanding talents is now every- 
where admitted. In my judgment, he was in his time 
the greatest living master of forensic discourse. Scorn- 
ing ornament, simple, vigorous, and correct in language 
and in manner, he was a powerful as well as just 
reasoner, from the very necessities of his intellectual 
and moral organization. He possessed a true as well 
as a large and powerful mind. 

His enemies have charged him w^ith ambition — with 
excess of ambition. He was ambitious ; but it was a 
great and a just ambition. He was ambitious in this, 
that he loved to engage in and to achieve great enter- 
prises. If he aspired to places of power, the position 
of power was never the goal with him. He sought 
power that he might accomplish great things for his 
country and his age. 

The architect of his own fortunes, as well as the 
architect of his own opinions, the surroundings and 
discipline of his early life, together with his naturally 
bold and self-reliant character, gave to him progressive 
rather than conservative proclivities, and led him, from 
the outstart of life, to espouse the opinions and policies 
of that great Democratic party, in the councils and 



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14 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



movements of whicli lie ever allerward acted so large 
a part. 

His promptness in judgment and boldness and energy 
in conduct would have made Mm a leader of men in 
any age or nation ; and wliile lie possessed the prompti- 
tude and courage of a great leader, he united with it a 
capacity for counsel equal to his capacity for action. 

Considered opinion will, I have no doubt, yield to him 
a place second to that of no man of his immediate 
time. 

The great feature of the public policies of Mr. 
Douglas is to be found in his devotion to the organiza- 
tion and development of the States and Territories of 
the West — that great country, which, by its marvelous 
progress, has given the best assurance of the vital power 
of our republic. Indeed, from the period when as a 
youth he stood on the green hills of his native Vermont, 
it would seem as if, obedient to some rudimental law 
related to the motion of the sun in heaven or the earth 
upon its axis, his look was westward ; and although he 
knew nothing of the fabled islands of the western sea 
which ancient songs and golden sunsets gilded, he saw 
in the new land yet unconquered from the wilderness 
the theatre in which to realize his young hopes and 
indulge the aspirations of his young ambition. During 
all his life his earnest eye was on the great West, while 
others of our statesmen knew more of the intrigues of 
the courts of Europe than of the important interests 
springing up beyond the Alleghanies. To those inter- 
ests — their comprehension and advancement — he de- 
voted himself with an unwavering zeal. Nor were his 
labors and interests confined by the valley of the lilhiois 



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or the great basin of the Mississippi. I have known no 
man in pubUc or private life who was so thoroughly 
conversant with or who interested himself so much in 
our possessions on the Pacific. He was the first person 
within my knowledge to earnestly advocate the con- 
struction of a railway from the Mississippi river to the 
bay of San Francisco. This was a favorite enterprise 
with him years before w^e had acquired California from 
Mexico. 

But the relations of Mr. Douglas to the States and 
Territories of the West — his labors for their material 
and political interest — are part of the history of the 
country. On the shores of the Pacific the intelhgence 
of his decease will put a whole people in mourning. 

Mr. Douglas was a courageous, magnanimous, true, 
and great man. I loved and honored him w^hile living ; 
I love and honor his memory dead. 

Mr. President, I second the resolutions by the honor- 
able Senator from Illinois. 



Address of Mr. Collamer, of Vermont. 

Mr. President: Stephen A. Douglas w^as a native 
of Vermont, and she claims to utter a word on the 
occasion of this solemn announcement of his decease. 
However much a majority of her people may have 
often, and perhaps generally, disagreed with his political 
positions and measures, yet they duly appreciate the 
strong points of his character, the elevated position he 



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16 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

has occu2)ied, and the extensive influence he has wielded 
in this nation, and cherish pride in him as one of their 
sons. That a poor orphan boy from the Green moun- 
tains could peaceably accomplish all this, is to that people 
not merely a matter of wonder or admiration of his 
personal resolution and ability, but an inspiring and 
brilliant manifestation of the generous lil^erality of our 
free institutions, opening the avenues of enterprise to 
success and elevation to the eifort and energy of all, 
however humble. 

Brilliant and commanding as have been the positions 
and parts which he has performed on the political 
theatre of this nation, it is strikingly observable in how 
short a time it was accomplished. His whole course 
in the national councils was confined to a period of less 
than twenty years. In that short period, laboring in 
the Democratic party, he succeeded in securing to him- 
self the sympathy and affection of the great body of the 
masses of that long-dominant party, and held their hearts 
in his hand. How generous and cordial must have 
been the spirit of the man to secure to himself so 
extensive, so confiding, and devoted attachments ! 

The first great ingredient in the composition of his 
success was, that he was not merely w^itli the masses 
of the people, but was of them. The people submit with 
cheerfulness to leadership and control if it is of their 
own creation ; and Mr. Douglas was not great by adven- 
titious circumstances beyond their control. This, his 
normal character, was never essentially modified by any 
sophistications of education, which with him was very 
limited; and he fully appreciated through life, as an 
element of his strength, and often proudly alluded to, 

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HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 17 



his early mechanic service as fixing liis identity witli 
the masses of the people. 

Another element of his success is found in his indomi- 
table energy and perseverance. This is too universally 
understood to require remark. It was said of old that 
the gods help those who help themselves, and men 
generally concur in like conduct. 

It has been truly said that "much study makes a wise 
man, much writing a correct man, and much speaking a 
ready man." The last of these propositions is most 
true of controversial speaking ; and of that Mr. Douglas 
was both an example and an illustration. Much has been 
said of his power of debate as a point in his superiority 
and an instrument of his elevation. As a public speaker, 
he was almost exclusively practiced as an advocate and 
champion of the Democratic party, whose principles 
and doctrines he never questioned. He thus became 
disciplined in occupying and defending positions rather 
than in selecting them. In this he became dexterous 
and adroit to an unusual and almost wonderful degree 
in all the skill of forensic gladiatorship. As the posi- 
tions of his party were, with him, unquestionable and 
axiomatic truths, he regarded everything opposed to 
them as false and unfounded. With this habit of mind, 
it became to him almost impossible ever to receive or 
appreciate, believe or present, the statement or argument 
of his opponent in any other fight but the one which 
would destroy their force or enable himself to answer 
them. His persistence was unrelenting, very seldom 
convinced of error, and never betraying a consciousness 
of being vanquished. 

In contributing to the repeal of the Missouri compro- 



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18 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

i^^lge — that prolific source of vast political complications 
and consequences — it was sanctified to liim by his cher- 
ished principle that the people were to be left " perfectly 
free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in 
their own way ;" and though too slow to believe the bor- 
der-ruffian violence by which the people of Kansas w^ere 
subjugated, yet, when violence and fraud culminated in 
that great national swindle, the Lecompton constitution, 
he met and exposed it with the frankness and decision 
of a just and high-minded patriot. 

Mr. Douglas supported the Democratic party as a 
national party. His attachments and sympathies were 
with the nation and its institutions wliich cherished him ; 
and his ambition or aspiration was to be President of 
the United States, not of only a part of it. His defeat 
was not by the body of his party, l)ut by the conspiracy 
of men long leaders in that party, no less ambitious 
than himself, but enemies of the nation, its institutions, 
and its flag. 

He became what he was, mainly through his own 
exertions; and the fact that they enabled him to acquire 
the distinction he possessed was due to the liberal 
institutions of this government: as to all wdiich he w^as 
neither insensible nor ungrateful. When the southern 
traitors proceeded to the dismemberment of this govern- 
ment by open war, he, laying aside the party differences 
which separated him from the Executive, promptly, and 
with frank, patriotic devotion, tendered to the Executive 
his services and influence to sustain the government in 
the hour of its peril. I say " its peril," as it has long 
since outgrown all apprehension of foreign invasion ; and 
domestic convulsions and internal war is its last trial. 



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HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 19 

Into this service he entered with his usual devotion, 
activity, and eloquence, until arrested by fatal disease. 

He has departed to his long home in the meridian of 
his manhood, and at a juncture in which he might have 
been of more than ordinary service to the country. 
Human judgment might say his death was untimely 
and premature. Human judgment is quite too feeble 
for such a subject; but how can we, even in human 
judgment, regard his departure as premature whose 
last public act was the crowning glory of his earthly 
career. 



Address of Mr. Nesmith, of Oregon. 

Mr. President: Though my personal acquaintance 
with Mr. Douglas was brief, it was of a nature to 
inspire me with admiration of his character, and fill 
my heart with gratitude for acts of personal kindness 
extended to me when I arrived in this capitol for the 
first time in January last. 

My silence on this occasion would not only do violence 
to my own feelings, but would be in sad contrast with 
the sorrowful emotions of the people whom I, in part, 
represent, and who have just cause to mouni the loss 
of a friend and benefactor. 

By the side of Illinois, Oregon claims the position of 
chief mourner at the portals of the tomb of the great 
Douglas. From the commencement of his congressional 
career to the day of his death we had no such devoted 
friend and able advocate. In the contest growing out of 
our boundary question, in 1846, he was a strenuous 



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20 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



advocate of our territorial integrity; and in the same 
year he reported a bill in the House of Representatives 
to give us a territorial organization. Again, in 1847, in 
this body, he rported another bill for the same purpose. 
He was also an efficient advocate of our admission as a 
State of the Union. His voice was always raised in our 
behalf, and in behalf of humanity, when w^e called upon 
Congress for protection against the savages who sur- 
rounded us, or for indemnification for losses suffered at 
their hands. During the long period that he was chair- 
man of the Committee on Territories, Oregon Territory 
never appealed to him in vain; while your records show 
that we have been the constant recipients of his aid since 
our admission as a State. 

In addition to the debt of gratitude which we owe 
for his public services in our behalf, his memory will 
lon<r be cherished in the hearts of many of the early 
settlers in Oregon, who were his neighbors, friends, and 
constituents in Illinois. 

These considerations, Mr. President, cause us to 
appreciate the melancholy fact that we have been 
deprived of a patron, friend, and benefactor. We are 
sadly conscious that our friend has fallen, and those of 
us who recognised him as our party chieftain, and were 
proud to award him the position m politics and states- 
manship which his great Scottish namesake once held 
as the gallant leader of his clansmen in war, can hardly 
realize that we have listened to his slogan for the last 
time. 

Inexorable death has paralyzed that gigantic intellect, 
but the memory of its noble achievements will never 
die; and millions yet unborn, while struggling with 



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HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



21 



adversity, will be pointed to liis noble career as a beacon 
light to guide them in the pathway of honorable useful- 
ness and patriotic renown. 

"In stilly tlioiiglit, and in bewildering fight, 
A cloud by day, a pillar'd flame by niglit, 
He'll point us onward, onward to the goal; 
Leading on legions with his vast control ; 
Implanting truth, the idol of his soul." 

In our present unfortunate difficulties Mr. Douglas 
rose above the partisan; and early in the last session, 
just after a heated political contest, he voluntarily de- 
clared that bygones with him should be forgotten, while 
his energies were devoted to the preservation of the 
Union which he loved so well. He resorted to every 
honorable exjjedient to avert from his country the 
horrors of sectional strife, and the shedding of fraternal 
blood, until forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and until 
treason, with unparalleled audacity, threatened the very 
existence of the government. It was then that he 
appealed in patriotic language to the gallant sons of his 
own State and the great Northwest to rally in defence 
of the Union, the Constitution, and the laws, though 
under the administration of a President whose advent to 
power he had opposed with all the energy of his mighty 
intellect. Less patriotic partisans have been known, 
while smarting under defeat, to contribute to the over- 
throw of a government which they were not permitted 
to administer. By his voluntary acts he furnished the 
strongest possible evidence that with him the preservation 
of the Union and the Constitution were paramount to 
all other considerations. His memory will be held in 
reverence so long as the history of our government is 



m- 



99 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



preserved, and while a single liiunan mind is imbued 
with a belief in the capacity of man for self-govern- 
ment. 

It is a source of gratification to know that the manly 
courage and heroic fortitude which so eminently charac- 
terized our friend in life, did not forsake him in the hour 
of his greatest trial. A consciousness of his ow^i rectitude 
of purpose during a w^ll spent life inspired him with the 
courage to meet the invitable fate which awaits us all, 
and to look w^ith composure upon the valley and shadow 
of death. 

Mr. President, in common with the people of Oregon, 
I mourn the loss of our benefactor. As an humble 
member of a powerful political organization, in common 
with thousands, I mourn the loss of our gallant chieftain 
and party leader, under w^hose proud banner we fought 
and followed in the forlorn hope. 

I mourn the loss of a kind-hearted, generous, and 
nol3le personal friend who gave me counsel and advice. 
Yet more, I mourn the irreparable loss which the nation 
and the Union sustain in being deprived of the patriotic 
counsels of his heart in this the hour of our greatest 
peril. 



Address of Mr. Broa\Ts^ixg, of Illinois. 

Mr. President: I appear here as the successor of 
one who was long a distinguished member of this very 
distinguished body, and who, since your last adjournment, 
has finished his course on earth, and crossed the mystic 
boundary which separates time from eternity. 



m- 



The melancholy duty of announcing the death of Hon. 
Stephen A. Douglas has already been impressively 
performed by my colleague. I desire to say how truly 
Illinois, the loved State of his adoption, deplores his 
loss, and how profoundly the nation participates in the 
bereavement. 

For many years past, the life of Senator Douglas has 
been intimately and thoroughly identified with the history 
of the United States. His was a prominent and con- 
spicuous part in the great drama of human affairs ; and 
he associated his name, for good or evil, with every great 
measure of the last decade affecting the interests and 
fortunes of our country. During that time no American 
statesman filled a larger space in the public mind; 
none maintained a stronger hold upon the affections of 
his friends. A vigorous and capacious intellect of great 
versatility and exhaustless resources ; an indomitable and 
exacting will, which subordinated, or sought to subordi- 
nate, all others to its control; a copious eloquence, 
distinguished more for strength and earnestness than for 
grace and bea'yity, addressing itself to the intellect more 
than to the sentiments ; coml^ined with a physical organ- 
ization capable of great endurance and unremitting labor, 
and with a temperament peculiarly ardent and impetuous, 
qualified him in an eminent degree for a great political 
leader; and, as such, he eminently acted his part. No 
cotemporary exercised equal influence with, or held as 
absolute dominion over, the minds of his followers. 

Without the adventitious aids of fortune or influential 
friends, but alone by the resources of his own intellect 
and the energy of his own character, he made his way 
from an humble but respectable position in private life 

p. • ^ m 



24 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



to tlie most exalted places of trust and honor known to 
our government. 

From the moment of commencing his public career 
his course was onward and upward. Success w^aited 
upon his steps. His way was luminous with triumphs 
seldom dimmed by defeat; and his achievements in the 
field of politics stopped short only of the highest and 
most coveted prize in the gift of the American people. 

At present, opinions will be various and diverse as to 
the influence of his hfe upon the cause of civihzation, 
the cause of human rights, and the destinies of our own 
great Eepubhc ; and it will only be after the passions, 
prejudices, and partialities engendered by the conflicts of 
his own time shall have faded away, that the faithful, 
impartial, and inexorable pen of history will truly estimate 
his character and justly assign him his place. 

But whatever diversities of judgment there may be 
among his cotemporaries as to the wisdom and benefi- 
cence of his measures, all wdll accord to him great 
talents, great energy, and an ardor and fervency of 
patriotism capable of sacrifices of personal predilections, 
prejudices, and antipathies, which a narrow mind and 
contracted sympathies could never have made. 

He was an extraordinary man, and very distinguished 
among those who were the most justly and eminently 
distinguished of his time; and I, in common with those 
wdio were his political friends and admirers, claim a 
share in his flmie, as our joint heritage, and a right to 
participate in their sorrow for his untimely death. 

In common with them, I mourn his loss, and ask the 
privilege of paying this poor tribute to his memory, and 
throwing an unworthy garland upon his toml). 



g)= 



11 ^ — - — »— — — — ■ — - — m 

HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 25 

I have not risen, Mr. President, for the purpose of 
eulogy or panegyric; not even to utter approval of the 
political principles which governed and shaped his public 
acts; but I would be unjust to my feelings should I fail 
to declare how deep and sincere was my sorrow for the 
loss of this distinguished Senator, and especially at a 
time when he had the power, to a greater extent than 
any other living man, to render valuable and important 
services to our perplexed and imperiled country, and the 
temper and disposition of mind to use that power as it 
should have been used by a patriot and statesman. 

I desire only to do justice to his memory. For a 
quarter of a century I knew him well and intimately. 
Young, ardent, and impetuous, and wedded to the for- 
tunes of opposing political parties, as widely sundered 
and as intensely hostile as parties have ever been in this 
government, we entered together upon our public career 
in the winter of 18o6-'o7, he as a member of the House 
of Representatives and I as a member of the Senate of 
the legislature of Illinois. Passing thence, at a later day, 
he took his place upon the bench, and I an humble 
position at the bar in the circuit where he presided. 
Our intercourse was intimate, and uniformly kind and 
courteous. 

In the spring of 1843, the State having been 
redistricted for congressional representation, he and I, 
residents of the same village — the one a judge, the 
other a practitioner before him — were nominated by 
our respective parties as opposing candidates for Congress 
in the same district. 

In the forenoon of a bright summer day in June, the 
court was brought to a close for the term in the last 

ii — ^ m 



m w 

26 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

county in the circuit, and lie at once resigned his 
judgeship. 

In the afternoon of the same day, by previous mutual 
arrangement, and at the urgent solicitation of both 
political parties, we addressed a large assemblage of 
Whigs and Democrats, thus opening one of the most 
excited, arduous, and earnest political campaigns that 
was ever made in the State. 

The next day we passed into another county, and 
again addressed the people; and, from that time forward 
till the election, we travelled together, often in the same 
conveyance, and spoke together from the same stand on 
an average of two hours each per day, and that repeated 
every day, as my memory now serves me, with the 
exception only of the Sa])bath. The district was one of 
the largest in the United States, both in population and 
territory, and the summer unusually warm; and it is 
perhaps not to be wondered at that the health of both 
of us gave way under the constant and heavy draught 
thus made on our physical and intellectual energies: 
mine a little before, and his on the day of the election. 

Perhaps at no time in our country's history did party 
spirit run higher or wax warmer than at this time it did 
in Illinois. Personal rancor was almost universal, and 
personal conflicts not unfrequent between opposing 
candidates. Impressed with a sense of how pernicious 
the influence of such an example was upon the public 
mind; how adverse to a calm and impartial hearing and 
fliir estimate of discussion of the questions which sepa- 
rated us, and vitally interested the country; and how 
incompatible with the dignity which ought to characterize 
I the deportment of gentlemen aspiring to high positions 

m^ 



of trust and honor, we came to a mutual understanding, 
before entering upon tlie canvass, not to violate with 
each other the courtesies and proprieties of life; and 
not to permit any ardor or excitement of debate to 
betray us into coarse and unmanly personalities. And I 
am proud to say that the compact was well and faithfully 
'kept on both sides. During the entire campaign not 
one unkind word or discourteous act passed between us; 
and we closed the canvass with the friendly relations 
which had previously subsisted undisturbed, and main- 
tained them, without interruption, to the day of his 
death. From this time forward our intercourse was 
less frequent. My path lay through the secluded and 
little observed walks of life; his was the highway of 
renown, wherein he attracted the constant attention of 
the nation, and won the unbounded confidence and 
approval of his friends. Occasionally, during his sena- 
torial life, we met in debate upon the hustings, and 
tilted and jousted upon the political arena, without any 
disturbance of the harmony of our personal relations. 

These details , can have no interest for the Senate or 
the public, save such as they derive from their connection 
with the illustrious dead. 

Mr. President, it is proper that I should say that there 
were but few political acts of his life which met my 
approval, with the exception of such as were crowded 
into the interval between the fall of Sumter and his 
death. 

For the first time in the world's history the astounding 
spectacle had been exhibited of a government plotting 
against its own life, and conspiring for its own overthrow. 

For the first time in our nation's history rebel hands 



p ^ m 

28 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

were raised in hostility against our country's flag, to 
rend its stripes and pluck its bright stars from their 
field of glory. 

We had then but recently passed through a fiery 
political contest, in which Senator Douglas had been 
the chosen and almost adored standard bearer of a great 
and renowned party, which was laboring to elevate him 
to a position equal in dignity, honor, and power to any on 
earth. Political parties have seldom been more bitterly 
hostile than were that which marshaled its hosts under 
his leadership, and that which followed the fortunes of 
our honored Chief Magistrate. The object of the Sen- 
ator's most intense and cherished desire, and to the attain- 
ment of which he had devoted his great energies and 
his unflagging industry — an object compatible with the 
purest and loftiest patriotism, and worthy of the most 
exalted ambition — had eluded his grasp, and was in the 
possession of his great and distinguished rival. 

The party which he, no doubt conscientiously, believed 
to be adverse to the best and truest interests of the 
country — the men who represented that party, and with 
whom he had maintained a life-long conflict, always 
earnest, and sometimes bitter — were installed in power, 
whilst his own friends were scattered and dispersed. 
Whatever the causes of hostility, whether his fault or 
ours, or whether the necessary and inevitable concomi- 
tant of political antagonisms between even just and good 
men, without fliult on the part of anybody, the fact is 
nevertheless so, that the political alienation l)etween him 
and those who represented and wielded the power of 
the government was complete. 

On the other hand, many of the distinguished men of 



the nation, who m former times stood by him in the 
same party organization, and labored indefatigably for 
his advancement and promotion, had embarked in an 
enterprise which had for its object not the overthrow of 
a party only, but the dismemberment of the Union, and 
the utter demolition of the government. His party 
affinities and his loyalty no longer fully and completely 
harmonized. He had to break with many of the most 
trusted and most distinguished of his former friends, 
and fraternize with his fiercest political foes, or he had 
to renounce his allegiance to the Constitution he had 
sworn to maintain, and prostitute his powers in plotting 
its overthrow. 

Let us do him justice. What his internal conflicts 
may have been, we cannot know; what our own would 
be, thus circumstanced, we dare not say; but we do 
know that, whatever the struggle in his own breast may 
have been, it was brief We do know that the patriot 
triumphed over the partisan, and that he threw the 
entire weight of his great influence on the side of his 
country in the hour of her greatest need. We do know 
that the indignity done in Charleston harbor to the stars 
and stripes, at once the emblem of the power and 
beneficence of the government, and the venerated me- 
mento of the sufferings and the sacrifices, the valor, 
virtue, wisdom, and patriotism of our illustrious sires; 
that the atrocious assault by the banded cohorts of 
treason upon a weak, worn, and enfeebled garrison of 
loyal and incorruptil^le American soldiers, in the faithfiil 
and gallant discharge of the highest and holiest duties, 
awakened all the enthusiasm, the indignation, and patriot- 
ism of his ardent nature, and enlisted all his energies, 



m^ — ■ -m 

30 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

unconditionally, in the service of his endangered country. 
We do know that the patriot achieved a great but easy 
conquest over the partisan; and that he heartily, warmly, 
and with a zeal befitting the momentous cause in which 
he was engaged, united with those who had heretofore 
not only opposed but denounced him, in a struggle to 
uphold the Union, sustain the Constitution, and vindicate 
the claim of the National Government to the obedience 
of all its citizens; and who should be foremost, most 
self-sacrificing, and efficient in the holy cause of the 
Great Republic, rich in cherished memories of the past, 
abounding in blessings for the present, and radiant with 
hope for the future, was the only rivalry between him 
and them. It was a noble and exalted rivalry, worthy 
of a great cause and great minds, and fitted to shed 
lustre upon the most eminent statesmen and patriots. 
Would that he could have lived to continue the generous 
strife until this most wicked and causeless revolt was 
everywhere subdued, and the footprint of a traitor no 
longer desecrated American soil. 

There was something, Mr. President, heroic in the 
promptitude, fearlessness, and decision with which he 
rent asunder the strong personal and party ties, and 
dashed from him the fetters which had once bound him 
to those who were now conspirators, when longer frater- 
nity with them was disloyalty to the government; and 
something almost sublime in the terrible energy with 
w^hich he denounced the treason, and launched his im- 
precations at the traitors who were warring upon the 
life of the great and good government under whose 
fostering care he had made himself what he was ; had 
struggled laboriously, l)ut successfully, up the rugged 



@- 



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steep, and taken his place in a conspicuous niche of the 
temple of fame. 

In times of peace Senator Douglas was an intense 
partisan. It was natural he should be so. Indeed, he 
could not have been otherwise. Espouse what cause he 
would, it was a necessity of his physical and mental 
organization that he should do it with all his might. 
Doubtless he always beheved his zeal and his party 
preferences to be in the line of his duty, and they 
certainly were in just subordination to his fealty as a 
citizen. 

He fought the battle of life l)ravely, but the conflict 
is over; and now that its turmoil is ended, he reposes 
quietly beneath the green sod of his adopted State. 

In the full vigor and maturity of his mental and 
physical energies, and just at the time when his services 
would seem to have been most needed in the great cause 
of human rights, he has been cut down by the fiat of 
that wisdom which never errs. 

That he had extraordinary endowments no one will 
deny; and whatever contrariety of opinion may exist as 
to the influence of his political policy and measures upon 
the destiny of the nation, the verdict of ^^osterity, the 
judgment of history, will be, that he went down with 
his patriotism unseduced, and with no stain upon his 
loyalty. 

Henceforth his name is indissolubly connected with 
his country's history. Many will esteem the pages which 
chronicle his deeds as among the brightest in our annals. 
All the just and good will bend reverently over the 
records of his closing career. 



m^ 



■© 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



Address of Mr. Anthoxy, of Rhode Island. 

Mr. President: To the affectionate praises of friends, 
and the magnanimous eulogies of rivals, I hope it will 
not be deemed presumptuous if I add a few remarks 
from one who sustained towards the subject of these 
resolutions the relations of personal friendship and of 
political antagonism. 

I first met Mr. Douglas soon after he had taken his 
seat in this body, in whose debates and deliberations he 
had already begun to hold a leading part, and with whose 
history his name has since been so closely identified. 
The frank cordiality of his manners, the unaffected 
kindness of his heart, the directness of his speech, and 
the readiness with which he declared himself upon all 
the questions of the day, made upon me that favorable 
impression which a more intimate acquaintance strength- 
ened and confirmed. 

It is not my purpose to follow his public career, or 
to enlarge upon the qualities of his character. That 
grateful ofiice has already been performed. But I have 
often thought that in his indomitable energy and will, 
in the sturdy self-reliance of his character, in his early 
development, and in his rapid march to success, he was 
no unfitting type of the American character. As a 
debater, Congress has afforded to him very few equals, 
either in this Chamber, or in the other House, where 
his earlier honors were won. Inexhaustible m resources, 
fierce and audacious in attack, skilful and ingenious in 
defence, he parried every thrust, and he struck, with 
irresistible fury, at the weak point of his adversary. He 

m. ^ »- ^ ^ — '- m 



m- 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



33 



■m 



was a party man, but lie loved his country better than 
his party ; and in the crisis which darkened the land in 
his latter days, he rose to the full height of the occasion, 
and appeared in the full proportions of an American 
Senator. His last utterances were for the Union; his 
last aspiration was for his country; nor is that country 
unmindful of his renown or ungrateful for his services. 
Amidst the perils of civil commotion and the shock of 
fraternal strife, she pauses to weep at his tomb. 

That voice to which we have so often listened with 
earnest attention, upon which these crowded galleries 
have hung, hour after hour, with unwearied delight, is 
hushed forever; and that home, so late the scene of 
genial and graceful hospitality, is shrouded in gloom; 
and to those who sit in its chambers of darkness, it 
seems that joy can never again cross its threshhold. To 
them I dare not address myself, for I well know that, at 
this time, the idea of consolation would seem almost like 
wrong to the dead; and that upon their ears, words of 
tenderest sympathy would fall almost with the harshness 
of insult. But, Mr. President, you and I know that, in 
the good providence of God, time, the healer, will come 
to them, as it comes to all, and that what is now a bitter 
anguish will grow to be a chastened sorrow, softened by 
the recollection of his greatness and his fame, consoled 
by the honors which the American people will pay to 
his memory. 



The resolutions were adopted nem con,; and the 
Senate adjourned. 



&> 



■P 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

Tuesday, July 9, 1861. 



A message was received from the Senate, by Mr. 
HiCKEY, its Acting Secretary, communicating to tlie 
House tlie resolutions passed by the Senate upon the 
announcement of the death of Hon. Stephen A. 
Douglas, late a Senator from the State of Illinois. 

The message from the Senate was read, as follows: 

In Senate of the United States, 

July 9, 1861. 

Resolved, unanimously, That tlie members of the Senate, from a 
smcere desh-e of showmg every mark of respect due to the memory of 
Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, deceased, late a Senator from the State 
of Illinois, will go into mourning by wearing crape on the left arm 
for thirty days. 

Resolved, unanimously, That as an additional mark of respect for 
the memory of Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, deceased, the Senate do 
now adjourn. 

Ordered, That the Secretary communicate these resolutions to 
the House of Representatives. 

Attest : 

W. HICKEY, 

Acting Secretary. 



Address of Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, 

Mr. Speaker: The resolutions which have been read 
at your table are the official notice to this House of an 
event vv^iich was known to each of us, and mourned by 
the country. 

Stephen A. Douglas, late a Senator in Congress 
from the State of Illinois, died at Chicago, the city of 
his residence, on the 3d of June last, in the forty-ninth 
year of his age. 

After suffering for several weeks from sickness, which 
baffled the skill of the most eminent physicians in the 
land, he passed away without pain. During his entire 
sickness, his fond and affectionate wife was present to 
cheer his hopes and sooth his suffering. Neither skill 
nor affection could stay the hand of death. The Great 
Author of our being had " appointed his bounds " that 
he could " not pass." 

We have, in the time of our need, lost one of our 
greatest statesman and purest patriots. In the midday 
of his manhood, in the midst of his usefulness, Mr. 
Douglas has descended to the grave. His sun of life 
has set forever. It fell from its meridian splendor. No 
twilight obscured its setting. 

As the sun of the physical world — the brightest and 
grandest of all the luminaries of the firmament — sinks 
to rest, tinging the clouds that stretch along the horizon 
with the golden glories of its declining rays, so 
Douglas, the sun-intellect of the Senate and the nation, 
has gone to his repose, reflecting the light of his great 
deeds and acts in the legislation of the country, and 



36 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



tinging the dark clouds that now obscure our pohtical 
horizon with the beauty and effulgence of that patriotism 
which illumined his descent to the tomb. 

But a short time ago a nation's eyes were turned to 
him to point the way for his country to escape the 
dangers which threatened its destruction; and when he 
was prostrated by sickness a nation's prayers ascended 
to Heaven that he might be spared to his country. 

Arriving at the age when ardor gives way to prudence, 
his friends, with cheerful hope, looked to his future with 
confidence that he would be useful to the nation and 
the age. 

Of all the men that have gone to the tomb, none have 
realized in full their own wishes or fulfilled the expecta- 
tions of their fellow-men; Judge Douglas adds another 
to the general list. 

It is difficult to realize that we are no more to hear 
his voice, either in the popular assemblies or in the 
Senate, with his clear statement and rigid logic, urging 
either the masses or enlightened Senators to adopt 
measures to preserve the govenmient and uphold the 
Constitution. 

For eighteen years, upon all the questions that agitated 
the pul3lic mind and elicited debate, his voice has been 
heard — his influence felt. Whatever in his judgment 
would advance the public good, augment national renown, 
strengthen the bonds of the Union, secure the rights of 
all the people, give to future generations the blessings of 
the Constitution as formed by our fathers, received the 
support of his untiring will and great intellect. 

This is not the befitting time or appropriate presence 
to discuss or even allude to disputed political questions. 



-m 




The parts he has borne m them pass into history, and 
they are safe. 

Mr. Douglas was the architect of his own fame. 
Penniless, and yet a minor, he came to Ilhnois, and while 
teaching a country school he studied and was admitted 
to the practice of law. He commenced his professional 
life at Jacksonville, and though the bar at that place was 
a very able one, numbering among its members gentle- 
men of great ability and large experience, he soon 
attained the front rank in their midst. 

At the session of the legislature in 1834-35, he was 
elected attorney for the State. His competitor was the 
late Colonel John J. Hardin, w^ho was distingished alike 
for his ability in the councils of the nation, and for his 
courage on the battle-field. In 1836 Mr. Douglas was 
elected to the legislature. In 1837 he resigned his seat 
in the legislature to accept the place of register of the 
land office at Springfield, to which he had been appointed 
by Mr. Van Buren. In 1838 he resigned the office of 
register, having been nominated for Congress. At the 
election of that year he was defeated by a very small 
majority against him in a vote of forty-odd thousand — 
then the largest ever cast in a single district in the 
United States. 

His successful competitor, after serving four years in 
this House with great credit, voluntarily retired from 
public life. Although Mr. Stewart was one of our purest 
and most sagacious public men, he has resisted the 
importunities of friends again to enter the political 
arena. 

In 1841 Mr. Douglas was made Secretary of State. 
After discharging, for a short time, the duties of that 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



position, lie resigned, and was elected in the same year 
a judge of the supreme court of the State of Ilhnois. 
In 1843 he resigned the judgeship, and was shortly 
afterwards elected a member of this House over the 
gentleman who is now his successor in the Senate. Mr. 
Douglas was twice reelected from the same district. At 
the session of the legislature of 1846-47, he was 
elected to the United States Senate. He resigned his 
place in this House after serving four years. He was 
twice reelected a member of the Senate. 

In his last contest for the Senate, which was the most 
remarkable in the history of the country, his competitor 
was the present President of the United States. In the 
contest in Ilhnois the party in opposition to him at all 
times presented their ablest man as his competitor. 

In 1860 Judge Douglas was a candidate for the first 
office in the gift of the American people. And although 
he received the second highest number of the popular 
vote, he was the lowest in the electoral college. 

At the bar, in the popular assembly, in the legislature, 
upon the bench, in this House, in the Senate of the 
United States, Mr. Douglas had no superior and but 
few equals. In all the positions he has held he has 
been found equal to the duties attending them, and 
adequate to any emergency that arose. He had all the 
essential elements for the jurist, the statesman, or the 
general. His intellect was stupendous. His quick 
perception grasped, his strong memory retained, and his 
ready logic commanded, immense resources of useful 
knowledge, gathered from all branches of the arts and 
sciences, from the history of the past and the active 
realities of the present. 



m- 



r 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 



In debate he rejected all rhetorical ornament, all 
ostentation and show. Stating his premises concisely, 
his reasoning led to his conclusion as irresistibly as the 
current of a strong and deep river tends to the sea. 
But it was when surrounded by friends in the social 
circle that he most happily and undesignedly exhibited 
the peculiarities of his great intellect; it was there that 
the fund of varied information was most drawn upon, 
and there that his great versatility was most brihiantly 
displayed. In his contests with political adversaries his 
boldness and fierceness had no parallel. Never halting 
in the strife to count losses, when the conflict w^as 
over he was ever ready to forget resentments and 



forsfive injuries. 



b^ 



In his support of measures, he looked only to great 
principles, and cared nothing for details ; he left them for 
others. If measures that he supported met the popular 
approval, he was contented to let others claim and enjoy 
the honors that resulted from them. If, however, meas- 
ures which he had favored were distasteful or unpopular, 
he asked no mai^i to share with him their responsibility. 
Whenever they were assailed he rushed to their defence, 
and endured whatever of obloquy attached to them. 
From his positions, when once assumed, no earthly 
power could drive him. In the defence of measures 
which met his approval, he was ready to meet an excited 
populace, a united Senate, an administration with a 
nation's patronage at its bid, or any combination, no 
matter how formidable. No power could intimidate 
him, no patronage corrupt him. More than any man I 
ever knew, he permitted himself to be assailed by 
falsehood and slander, when he had the means to refute 



40 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

the one or silence the other. If the sknder affected 
himself alone he was nnmindful of it. 

Dying at an age where the usefulness of statesmen 
usually begins, he leaves a fame that will outlive eulogies 
and survive monuments. Indissolubly connected with 
the great events of his time, his name will go down 
with our history to future generations. 

Born in 1813, during the war between this country 
and England — a coniiict betwxen people speaking the 
same language and of a common origin, he died when 
the different sections of his own country were marshaling 
their armies in hostile array to engage in a fratricidal 
war. He saw his country advance to the highest 
elevation any had ever attained. He witnessed more of 
advancement, improvement, and progress, in all that is 
calculated to elevate mankind and nations, than has 
belonged to any one age of the world's history. He 
contemplated with patriotic pride the happiness of our 
people, and the grandeur and glory of our country. 

I formed Mr. Douglas's personal acquaintance during 
his first contest for office. We entered public life 
together. For more than a quarter of a century w^e 
were friends without the slightest interruption. That 
friendship survives one grave, it will close with tw^o. 
He w^as a noble and generous friend. 

But, Mr. Speaker, the language of eulogy fails to 
furnish a fitting tribute upon this occasion. One word 
relative to his last days and the family circle so rudely 
sundered. 

I shall not trust myself with the delicate office of 
offering consolation within the sacred precincts of that 
home which is now desolate. God alone can heal the 



d- 



hearts there wounded. The words of "dyhig men 
enforce attention;" but never, among all the great men 
that have passed to the grave, has one's last words been 
more imj3ressive, more grandly patriotic, than the last 
message of Mr. Douglas to his children : " Tell them 
to support the Constitution and the laws." At the same 
time, while these eloquent words inculcate the duty of 
every citizen, they announce in a brief but grand epitome 
the labors and aspirations of a well-spent lifetime. 

I offer, for the adoption of the House, the following 
resolutions : 

Resolved, That the House of Representatives of the United 
States has received, with deepest sensibility, intelligence of the 
death of Stephen A. Douglas. 

Resolved, That the officers and members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives will wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days, as 
a testimony of the profound respect this House entertains for the 
memory of the deceased. 

Resolved, That the proceedings of this House in relation to the 
death of Stephen A. Douglas be communicated to the family of 
the deceased by the Clerk. 

Resolved, That, as a further mark of respect for the memory of 
the deceased, the House do now adjourn. 



Address of Mr. McClernand, of Illinois, 

Mr. Speaker: I rise with a heavy heart to second 
the motion of my distinguished colleague. Duty to 
myself, as well as to my constituents, requires me to do 
so. Much that I would be pleased to say under other 
circumstances must be forborne now, in view of what 
has already been said so well by my colleague, and what 



m — — = — ■ ^ — ' ^ 

42 OBITUAEY ADDRESSES. 

will probably be said by others more able to do the 
subject justice than myself. 

Addressing myself to the resolutions offered by my 
colleague, I feel that they have a deeper and more real 
significance than any mere ceremony or empty pageant. 
Their source and their language bespeak them to be a 
heartfelt effusion. As the official expression of a nation's 
grief, they are all worthy of the approbation of this 
House ; and will they not receive it 1 Alas ! a great woe 
broods over the land; a deep gloom veils the social and 
political sky! What is the cause of this melancholy 
changed Why these tokens of sadness and sorrow! 
Why these mourning cities and towns; these shrouded 
busts of one unmistakable man; these solemn knelling 
bells; these plaintive strains of martial music; these 
quick-pealing minute guns; this suspension of a nation's 
occupations and pursuits; this universal lamentation? 
Why all thisi What great calamity has occasioned it? 
The answer comes up from all sides — as w^ell from the 
shores of the Pacific as from those of the Atlantic and 
the Mississippi; from mountain and valley; from city 
and hamlet; from every inhabited spot within the broad 
limits of the Republic, the universal answer comes — 
"A great man has fallen; the American Tribune is no 
more; Stephen A. Douglas, the orator and statesman, 
is dead." This is the explanation — the explanation 
of a nation's grief — of the tokens of sorrow which 
everywhere surround us — of the distress depicted upon 
the countenances of this assembly. 

How fearfully and wonderfully are we made ! Lately 
my long-cherished friend, Mr. Douglas, was a strong, 
robust man, capable of performing almost any amount 



m- 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, 43 

of labor, and of enduring almost any amount of hardship. 
His physical and intellectual powers had just culminated 
in glorious maturity, and gave as much assurance of long 
life as ahnost any of us may justly claim; yet now he 
has passed away from the earth forever. The ruthless 
shaft of death, ever seeking a shining mark, has laid him 
low, and the brave, strong man is committed to the silent 
tomb. No more will we see his large, dark-gray eye 
flash with, the radiance of genius, and glare with the 
intensity of fixed and unswerving purpose. No longer 
will his eloquent voice be heard in the Senate Chamber, 
or by admiring and captivated multitudes. No more 
will his strongly-marked Jove-like head, with its lion 
mane, shake defiance at beleaguering assailants. No 
more w^ill his restless, fruitful brain invent and forge the 
terrible weapons with which he was wont to subdue his 
adversaries. Alas ! the body of the great man has gone 
to decay; while his immortal spirit, as a spark first 
radiating from the Divine essence, has returned to its 
original source. Like the greatest of the Homeric 
heroes, whom Providence "doomed to early death," so, 
too, the younger Douglas w^as cut off* in the very vigor 
of manhood and the meridian of life. Indeed are the 
w^ays of Providence "unsearchable and past finding out." 
Man is here to-day and gone to-morrow ; as the transient 
grass, "In the morning it springeth up and flourisheth; 
in the evening it is cut down and withereth." 

But, sir, w^e must not confine ourselves entirely to 
expressions of grief, nor deal in general terms of eulogy, 
if we would do justice to Mr. Douglas's character. To 
estimate his merits as one of the first statesmen of his 
time, we must not forget the many and formidable 



-m 



obstacles lie had to overcome, particularly in liis early 
life. Left an orphan, without fortune or influential 
friends, in his very inflmcy — like Jackson, Clay, and 
other self-made personages — he had to rely upon himself 
for success.. Like Plato, he may have believed that a 
mechanical as well as a scholastic education was necessary 
to qualify a ruler of the people to wield political power 
wisely and beneficently. At all events, after learning a 
mechanical trade, and obtaining, as far as his limited 
means would allow, an imperfect education, he resolved 
to leap into the great battle of life, and, if possible, to 
win the laurel of the victor and hero. 

In answer to the interrogatory, Wliither he should 
direct his footsteps'? he could not long hesitate. Such 
a man rarely hesitates. Looking towards the setting 
sun, he saw there nature displayed in boundless grandeur. 
He saw there the great valley of the Mississippi, described 
by the enthusiastic De Tocqueville as "the most mag- 
nificent region provided by Grod for man's abode." He 
saw there, too, as the most attractive portion of that 
valley, the "Great West,'' with her giant forests and 
verdant prairies — with her turbid rivers and glassy 
lakes; and grasping by intuition her hidden resources 
and prospective development, he determined to make it 
his home. Hence, soon we find him an actual resident 
of the charming village of Jacksonville, in Illinois. 
Besides the general attractions of the West, it may be 
supposed that a congenial affinity between genius and 
natural beauty attracted him to this spot; for we are 
informed that it was a vivid picture of it and the surround- 
ing country dehneated by an admiruag Scotch tourist 
that first bent his footsteps thither. 



m- 



e- 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 45 

Arriving at Jacksonville, in his twentieth year, he 
was a stranger in a strange land — a wanderer reduced 
to his last shiUing, and with no other resource than his 
own energies to save him from impending destitution. 
What was the result ? Did the pale, slight youth 
despair; or, yielding to tempting want, did he repress 
the noble aspirations of his soul, and divert his talents 
to some mean and dependent occupation? Was he 
content to ignore his destiny] Not so; but finding 
himself unable to acquit his unavoidable personal ex- 
penses at Jacksonville by anything that he could do, he 
immediately set out on foot for Winchester, a village 
some seventeen miles distant, and reached there the 
same day. Here his adverse fortunes ceased to persecute 
liim; and in anticipation of his rising fortune, men said 
of him: 

"This dawn 
Will widen to a clear and boundless day; 
And wlien it ripens to a sumptuous west, 
"With a great sunset 'twill be closed and crowned." 

Here he fou^d remunerative employment, both as a 
lawyer and as a teacher. Henceforth, he becomes a 
man of mark and note. Henceforth, every obstacle to 
his advancement pales and vanishes before the glowing 
fire of his long repressed genius, and as a dazzling orb 
he courses the political and professional firmaments, 
drawing after him the wondering gaze of admiring 
multitudes. 

Filling every office in the gift of his adopted State, 
from that of district attorney to that of Senator in 
in Congress, which he chose to ask or accept, he died 
her boasted and favorite son. Long will his memory 



-m 



46 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

be cherished by her as one of the brightest ornaments 
of her noble escutcheon. Reflecting honor upon him, 
so he, in turn, reflected honor upon her; and forever 
will the names of lUinois and Douglas be linked 
together upon the page of history. Douglas and 
Hardin, his heroic rival, of all her representative men, 
are the most endeared to her aflection. To both she 
has given honored graves — to one as the champion of 
her rights in the councils of the nation, to the other as 
the champion of her loyalty upon the field of battle. 
To the fame of both she will proudly continue to point, 
as the mother of the Gracchi, to her children as her 
jewels — as the proofs of her wealth. 

As the career of Mr. Douglas as a statesman forms 
a brilliant and familiar portion of the history of our 
country, it will be unnecessary to do more than to glance 
at it. As a public man, he was prompt, enterprising, 
and persistent. At the very outset of his legislative 
career, he identified his name with two of the most 
popular and useful public works in Illinois, by proposing, 
as a member of her legislature, a series of resolutions 
recommending their early construction. I refer to the 
Illinois and Michigan canal, which opens up a com- 
munication between the waters flowing into the Gulf 
of Mexico and those flowing into the Gulf St. Lawrence; 
and to the Ilhnois Central railroad, which furnishes an 
overland connection between the upper Mississippi and 
Lake Michigan and the main Mississippi at Cairo. 
And afterwards he materially contributed to the com- 
l)letion of the latter improvement, by his influence as a 
Senator of the United States, in procuring the grant of 
land made by Congress for that purpose. This was a 



m- 



HOJ^. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 47 

proud triumph of persevering statesmanship, and will 
long endure as a worthy monument to his fame. Its 
priceless benefits are, to-day, hailed by all lUinoisans as 
marking a new and joyous era in the history of their 
beloved State. 

But, as I have already said, I have not time to dwell 
upon particulars. It will be enough to say that no man 
of his time took a more active or conspicuous part in 
public affairs than he did. His name stands prominently 
connected with every important question of public 
policy, whether of a domestic or of foreign character, 
which has arisen within the last eighteen years. He 
favored the annexation of Texas; he opposed the dis- 
memberment of Oregon; he voted for the compromise 
measures of 1850, looking to the settlement of the 
slavery question; he advocated the repeal of the 
Missouri restriction and the uniform organization of all 
our territorial governments upon the principle of popu- 
lar sovereignty; he 02:)posed the admission of Kansas 
into the Union under the Lecompton constitution. 

Again: he i^rged the compromise of the slavery 
question and our sectional differences, at the last session 
of Congress, as the alternative of civil war; and when 
armed rebellion arose against the government, he ap- 
pealed to the patriotism of the people to put it down 
by overwhelming force. Standing upon the "Monroe 
doctrine," he was ever jealous of monarchical influence 
upon the American continent; and hence always pro- 
tested against any colonization of any portion of it by 
any European or other transmarine Power. In the 
mean time, not forgetting the material interests of his 
country, he zealously advocated all those measures of 




II 



internal improvement, which he deemed of a national 
character and necessary to the welfare of the country. 

The project of a railroad to the shores of the Pacific 
had no more ardent supporter than himself He looked 
upon it as a bond necessary to consolidate the different 
and distant portions of the Republic as one homogeneous 
and harmonious social and commercial whole; and the 
popularity of the measure, at this time, is no doubt as 
much the result of his commendation as of that of any 
other man, not excepting even the lamented Benton. 

As a debater, Mr. Douglas was great, truly great, in 
the dexterous use of passing facts and familiar circum- 
stances. In this he was probably greater than any of 
his illustrious cotemporaries. This was the type of his 
mind — it was his forte. Less eloquent than Clay, less 
logical than Webster, less versatile than Benton, he w^as 
the superior of them all in the readiness of his intellect 
and the distinctness and clearness of his statements, as 
a public speaker. More like Silas Wright, the great 
New York statesman, he was always unostentatious, 
copious, clear, and forcible. As an extempore speaker, 
his capabilities were transcendent and amazing, and 
unquestionably place him in the first rank of debaters 
of any age or country. 

As an orator, his manner was peculiar to himself 
Although possessing but little of the qualities of the 
rhetorican, and still less of the art of the theatrical 
declainier, yet his action was far from ungraceful, while 
his voice was singularly full and sonorous. What he 
lacked as a rhetorical declainier he more than made up 
by the earnestness and vehemence of his delivery. Like 
Demosthenes, whose style he appears to have cultivated. 



he was always in earnest, ever on fire. His power over 
liis hearers was often demonstrated by his success in 
swaying Senators and controlhng the violence of the 
populace. 

One of his first efforts as an orator is one of the best 
he ever made. I refer to his speech, as a member of 
this House, in favor of the bill refunding the fine im- 
posed by Judge Hall on General Jackson, at New 
Orleans, in 1815, for refusing to produce, in obedience 
to a writ of habeas corpus, Louallier, who had been 
arrested under martial law upon a charge of treason 
against the United States. The theme was a great one, 
and inspired the speaker with grand and noble thoughts, 
which he poured forth in rapid and resistless volume. 
He discussed and distinguished the rights of peace and 
the rights of war, the law of deliberation, volition, and 
choice, and the paramount law of necessity. All the 
fire and enthusiasm of his ardent nature were infused 
into his impetuous yet logical appeals, until the storm 
of his eloquence and the accumulated weight of his 
argument carried the House cajDtive, and thrilled the 
whole country with generous emotion. 

The success of this effort may be judged by the 
grateful response that it elicited from General Jackson 
himself, when afterwards Mr. Douglas, for the first 
time, met him at the Hermitage. Taking him by the 
hand, the venerable hero said: 

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Douglas. You compreliended my 
situation at New Orleans. Martial law was a necessity there, and I 
took the responsibility of declaring it. If I had shrunk from doing 
so, and harm had accrued to the country, I would have proved myself 
unequal to the emergency, and unworthy of the trust reposed in me. 



It was upon tliat.groimd — the necessity of the case — that you justified 
my conduct; and I thank you, sincerely thank you, for it." 

Other instances, too, of his oratorical success might 
be adduced : as his defence of the compromise measures 
of 1850, at Chicago, amid the blazing effigies of his own 
person, and regardless of the threats of the enraged 
populace. Like Mark Anthony, over the dead body of 
Caesar, he melted the savage fury of the rabble into the 
softness of contrition and tears. Like the Tribune 
Rienzi, he appealed to the patriotism and sense of duty 
of the people through the images and examples of their 
departed benefactors, which he set before them with all 
the charms of eloquent and impassioned delineation ; and 
they heard him and were convinced. Never was there 
a grander triumph of natural eloquence pleading the 
cause of truth and justice. Mr. Webster tlianked him 
on behalf of the nation for this noble and heroic effort. 
I might also refer to the frequent discussions between 
him and President Lincoln as affording kindred exam- 
ples of the celebrated contests of the fabled giants of 
antiquity. As the acknowledged champions of opposing 
parties, they often met in intellectual combat, while 
each, by his skill and prowess, won the applause of his 
admiring friends. 

Defeating Mr. Lincoln in their memorable contest for 
the Senate, in 1858, yet the latter gained, from defeat 
by such a man, the distinction which afterwards assisted 
him to the Presidency. 

Mr. Douglas, as a Democrat of deep and earnest 
convictions, w\as not unfrequently an ardent and active 
partisan, yet he never found it impossible to subordi- 
nate his party feelings and purposes to the higher 



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HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 51 

dictates of public duty. We have a noble instance of 
this in the fact that, although defeated by Mr. Lincoln 
for President, he voluntarily went forward and offered 
him the assistance of liis counsels and co-operation in 
the interest of the Constitution and the Union. Noble 
conduct — all worthy of imitation! How unlike that of 
the brave but jealous Achilles, who withdrew from the 
ser\dce of his country rather than yield to a preferred 
rival ! 

Before this House or in this city, where all loved and 
admired him, it were needless to dwell on his remark- 
able colloquial powers, and his other innumerable social 
gifts and virtues ; on his generosity unostentatiously dis- 
played in acts of charity; his well-known generous and 
princely hospitality; the gravity and dignity of his man- 
ner, ever softened by cordial warmth and urbanity; the 
goodness of his heart; or his unwavering kindness as a 
husband, a father, and a friend. All know how fully the 
greatness of his mind was matched by the elevation of 
his character, and this knowledge adds immeasurably 
to the universal 'grief at the loss of one so endowed. 
Great intellects mark the epochs of the world. They 
frequently flourish as cotemporaries and follow each 
other in quick succession to the grave. As new and 
shining constellations, they suddenly appear in the moral 
firmament, and, after burning with a dazzling light for a 
season, disappear, leaving a gloomy void, and only reap- 
pear to inspire and illuminate the world again at some 
remote and uncertain period. Calhoun, Webster, Clay, 
and Benton flourished together in the same land, and 
passed away at short intervals of time. Douglas, the 
champion of American liberty, dies in the New World, 



m ^ =•- ? 

52 OBITUAEY ADDRESSES. 

and Count Cavour, the champion of Italian liberty, dies 
soon after in the Old. 

The Romans had a generous maxim that nothing but 
good should be said of the dead. And what else may 
be truthfully said of the lamented Senator] Never 
in this or any other country was there a man whose 
eminent merits were recognised with more striking 
unanimity, or whose value in such an hour of need was 
more generally appreciated. Glorious in life, he was 
also glorious in the extremity of death. AVlio but those 
who were present with him during his last days can tell 
how many sublime expressions fell from his emphatic 
lips as he lay upon his last bed I With what patience 
and resignation did he bear the torture of a protracted 
illness ! With what calmness did he hear the warning 
of his approaching doom ! With what solemnity, as he 
paused in the shadow of the coming gloom of the grave, 
did he murmur the awful words, " death ! death ! death ! " 
With what simple sublimity of natural feeling did he ask 
to be raised on his pillow, that, like the German poet, 
he might for the last time admire the face of nature ! 
What unutterable thoughts must have flashed across his 
prophetic mind as he thus surveyed the surrounding 
prospect ! 

Before him lay the great lake, solemn, silent, and 
calm — like that great ocean on which he must sail so 
soon, reflecting the sublime serenity of that Heaven on 
which his soul reposed in trembling hope. There lay 
the groves and prairies in all their floral beauty and 
variegated verdure. There, like a young queen viewing 
her charms in the smooth mirror of the like, rose the 
city of Chicago, which he had honored as the place of 



his abode, and wliich, so young, so fidl of promise and 
of hope, in that solemn moment, silently and grate- 
ftdly acknowledged the dying patriot as her chief 
benefactor. 

Who can read without emotion of his last legacy to 
his dear children, wdien, like the father of the infant 
Hannibal, leading him to the altar to swear eternal 
enmity to his country's foes, he said with his last breath : 
"Tell them to obey the laws, and defend the Constitu- 
tion." Oh, what a commentary on his life of patriotic 
devotion ! Love of country, the leading passion of his 
soul, triumphed even in the embrace of death. The 
last faint words of Napoleon, " Tete d'Arynee^' betokened 
a spirit still busy with the work of ambition; but the 
last words of Douglas disclosed the exalted principles 
of the patriot and statesman. 

May his countrymen ever remember his dying coun- 
sels, and so well maintain the Constitution which he 
loved, that, by the reunion of the divided members of 
our Eepublic, they who drew from his noble life so 
many political blessings, may receive a great benefit 
even from his lamented and untimely death ! 



Address of Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. 

Mr. Speaker: I have only a few words to say. 
Another of the great men of our country has passed 
away. Since the last adjournment of Congress, a few 
months since, the honorable Senator Douglas has fallen 
into the grave. I do not stand here, sir, in imagination 



m- 



54 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



by the side of that gi'ave, to use the language of flattery. 
I do not rise, sir, for the purpose of lavishing praises 
to his memory. That will belong to the impartial 
history of his time. When the history of this country 
shall be written, recorded honors will cluster around his 
name. Mr. Speaker, the death of Mr. Douglas struck 
a heavy blow on the American heart; and his memory 
is embalmed in the hearts of his countrymen. I have 
witnessed few occasions, . in the course of my life, 
when there has been any greater exhibition of public 
sorrow. 

Sir, I was well acquainted with Mr. Douglas. We 
were kept apart for a long period of the time that we 
both served in the National Councils by our political 
differences. But for the last four or five years of Mr. 
Douglas's hfe we were associated personally and politi- 
cally, and I had an opportunity of becoming well ac- 
quainted with the man ; and in all my intercourse of an 
intimate character with him, while we agreed in politics 
and acted together, I found him to be an honorable and 
patriotic man, disinterested and noble in his patriotism, 
and ready to sacrifice his personal interests for the good 
of his country. This I can testify from my knowledge 
of his character. Mr. Douglas was an extraordinary 
and remarkable man. Not favored by fortune in the 
earlier periods of his life, belonging, as I understand, to 
the humble but worthy class of the mechanic, he raised 
himself by his own exertions to the high position which 
he occupied. It seemed to me that Mr. Douglas's mind 
expanded with his increasing elevation; and I know of 
no man in this country now left who is better entitled to 
the denomination of statesman than was Mr. Douglas 

@ ~— » »»_„, -.^ = =- : 'g 



at tlie time of his death. He was honest, generous, 
patriotic in all his actions and purposes. He was 
ambitious, but he sought to attain eminence by public 
services. There have been times when I thought less 
favorably of him. But my opportunities of knowing 
him better enabled me to correct my error in regard 
to his character; and I speak but what I truly believe 
when I bear this testimony to his worth. His mind 
expanded and improved step by step as he advanced 
in life; and his country sustained a great loss in his 
death, at a time like this, when it is surrounded by peril 
and disaster. 

I know of no man who might have been more useful 
in this crisis. There are few who had so much of the 
confidence of his countrymen, and who combined with it 
such a capacity for controUing and leading them. Sir, 
as a friend, I mourn him; as an American citizen, I mourn 
him. And it is right that we should give this recorded 
evidence here, of our sympathy and regret for his early 
death. He was young when he died; but to the young, 
death is not always a calamity. In most instances, per- 
haps, it ought to be regarded philosophically as more of 
a blessing than the life which is taken. He died young, 
in the meridian of his life, in his palmy days; leaving 
his country mourning, and the heart of his agonized 
widow filled with an incurable sorrow. But, sir, there 
is a Power above us all, and I trust that that God, who 
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will take care of 
the widow and the fatherless. 



W' 



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56 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



Address of Mr. Cox, of Ohio. 

Mr. Speaker: Ohio is not separated from Kentucky, 
either in the estimate of Judge Douglas which has been 
so eloquently pronounced by the distinguished statesman 
[Mr. Crittenden] who has just taken his seat, or in the 
grief which has been expressed for the premature 
closing of his illustrious career. That career closed 
with the opening of this eventful summer. It abounded 
in friendships, services, and ambitions. It ended while he 
was enjoying the tumult of universal acclaim, and when 
all felt the need of its continuance. Labor paused in its 
toil, bankers shut their offices and merchants their stores, 
lawyers and judges adjourned their courts, ministers 
added new fervor to prayer, partisans united in hushed 
regret, and soldiers draped the flag in crape, to bear their 
part in the great grief of the nation. He died in the 
midst of the people who had honored him for a genera- 
tion; in the city whose growth had been fostered by his 
vigilance ; in the State whose prairies were familiar to 
his eye from earhest manhood; and in that great North- 
west, whose commercial, agricultural, physical, and im- 
perial greatness was the pride of his heart and the type 
of his own character. There was in him a quick 
maturity of gi'owth, a fertility of resource, and a sturdi-- 
ness of energy, which made his hfe the microcosm of 
that great section with which he was so closely 
identified. 

That mind which had few equals and that will which 
had no conqueror, save in the grave, were at last wrung 
from his iron frame. It is hard to believe that he lies 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 57 

13ulseless in his sepulchre at Cottage Grove. It is sad to 
feel that the summer wind which waves the grass and 
flowers of his loved prairies has, in its low wail, an elegy 
to the departed statesman. Well might the waters of 
the lake, just before his death, as if premonitory of some 
great sacrifice, swell in mysterious emotion. These poor 
panegyrics, from manuscript and memory, fail to express 
the loss which those feel who knew him best. One 
would wish for the eloquence of Bossuet, or the muse of 
Spenser or Tennyson, to tell, in the poetry of sorrow, 
the infinite woe which would wreak itself upon ex- 
pression. 

For weeks the public have mourned him as a loss so 
grievous as to be irreparable in this trying time of the 
Eepublic. The lapse of time only adds to the weight of 
the bereavement. The tears which fell around his 
bedside and on his bier still 

"Weep a loss forever new." 
With every passing day we turn, but turn in vain, to 
catch his hopeful tone, his discriminating judgment, his 
philosophic foresight, and his courageous patriotism. 
They only come to us in memory and in mourning. His 
lips are sealed, his eye is dim, his brain is shrouded, his 
heart is still; and the nation stands with throbbing heart 
at his grave. " His virtue is treasured in our hearts ; 
his death in our dispair." It is no mere ceremonial, 
therefore, that the national legislature, in whose counsels 
he has taken so prominent a part, should pause, even 
in extraordinary session, to bestow that homage which 
friendship, intellect, and patriotism, ever oifer to the true 
man, the gifted soul, and the enlightened statesman. 

Judge Douglas struggled into greatness. He had no 



58 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

avenue to honor except that wliicli was open to all. 
The power and patronage which aided him, he created; 
and the wealth which he made and spent so freely, came 
from no ancestral hand. Part teacher and part cabinet 
maker, he left the East for the ruder colhsions of border 
life. There he grew up under the adversities which 
strengthened him into a vigorous and early maturity. 
His own manhood soon made itself felt. He became 
the pohtical necessity of his State. He filled many of 
its most important offices before he became nationally 
known. The Democratic people of the Union were 
soon attracted to him. As early as 1848 they began to 
think of him as their candidate for President; while, in 
1852, the Democratic Review hailed him as the coming 
man; a man who had no grandfather or other incident 
of biographical puffery; as one whose genealogical tree 
had been sawed up; as a graduate from the university 
of the lathe; as one with the materials, the mind, and 
the energy, to shape, fashion, and make enduring, a plat- 
form of his own. 

No notice of Stephen A. Douglas is complete which 
does not remark upon the singular magnetism of his 
personal presence, the talismanic touch of his kindly 
hand, the gentle amenities of his domestic life, and the 
ineradicable clasp of his friendships. It may not be 
improper to refer to the fact, that I was one among 
the many young men of the west, who were bound to 
him by a tie of friendship and a spell of enthusiasm 
which death has no power to break. These are the 
pearls beneath the rough shell of his political life. 
There are many here who will understand me, when I 
recall the gentle tone and the cordial greeting with 



wliicli lie used to woo and win and hold tlie young 
partisans of liis faith, and the warm promoters of his 
success. Ever ready with his counsel, his means, and 
his energies, he led them as much by the persuasiveness 
of his heart as the logic of his head. The same gentle 
demeanor which fondled his children and taught them 
a beauty of manners beyond all praise, the same pure 
respect and tenderness with which he treated his noble 
wife and companion, silvered the cords of attachment 
which bound his friends to him, and made his home at 
Washington and his sojourns elsewhere, recollections as 
sweet as memory can embalm. 

While others bear testimony to his moral heroism, 
intellectual prowess, fixedness of principle, and unstained 
patriotism, it seems that his spirit, if it hovers over this 
scene of his obsequies, would receive with purest delight 
these tributes of friendly affection. I recall in my own 
experience, which runs with unbroken association of 
friendship with him from the first year of my political 
life, many of his acts of unselfish devotion, many words 
outspoken to the public, which the mere designing 
politician would not have uttered, and many tenders of 
aid and counsel, which were the more grateful because 
unsought, and the more serviceable because they came 
from him. It is one of the felicities of my life, that I 
have been the recipient of his kindness and confidence; 
and that the people whom I represent were cherished 
by him, as he was by them, with the steadfastness of 
unalloyed devotion. 

It was his pleasure very often to sojourn in the capital 
city of Ohio, where, regardless of party, the people paid 
him the respect due to his character and services. 



Among the last of the associations which he had with 
Ohio was his address, a few weeks before his death, to 
the people at its capital, on the invitation of the State 
legislature. His stirring tones still thrill upon the air, 
protesting for the right and might of the Great West to 
egress through our rivers and highways to the sea 
against all hostile obstruction, and for the maintenance 
of the government, threatened by the great revolution 
which yet surrounds us. 

His last utterance was the fit climax of a life devoted 
to the study of this government, and of a patriotism 
which never swerved from its love for the Union. It 
was worth whole battalions of armed men. A word 
from him made calm from tempest, and resolved doubt 
into duty. His thought swayed the tides of public 
opinion as vassals to his will. After his hot contests in 
the Senate, during the first session of the last Congress; 
after his Harper essay in development of his political 
theories ; after his heroic campaign in the South, closing 
at Norfolk in his courageous reply to the questions of 
the disunionists ; after his struggles of last winter, when 
he strung his energies to the utmost in pleading for 
peace and conciliation; after all had failed, and anarchy 
stalked with haughty head through the land, and even 
jeopardized this metropolis of the nation, it was the 
consummate glory of his fife to have given his most 
emphatic utterance for the maintenance of the govern- 
ment, even though its administration was committed to 
his old political antagonist, and although he knew that 
such expression imperiled the lives of a hundred thousand 
of his friends. 

Scarcely with any of our public men can Douglas 



be compared. The people like to compare him to 
Jackson, for his energy and honesty. He was like the 
great triumvirate — Clay, AVebster, and Calhoun — but 
"like in difference." Like them in his gift of political 
foresight, still he had a power over the masses possessed 
by neither. Like Clay in his charm to make and hold 
friends and to lead his party; like Webster in the 
massive substance of his thought, clothed in apt political 
words ; like Calhoun in the tenacity of his purpose and 
the subtilty of his dialectics; he yec surpassed them all 
in the homely sense, the sturdy strength, and indomitable 
persistence with which he wielded the masses and 
electrified the Senate. 

Li the onslaught of debate he was ever foremost; 
his crest high and his falchion keen. Whether his 
antagonists numbered two or ten, whether the whole of 
the Senate were against him, he could "take a raking 
fire at the whole group." Like the shrouded Junius, he 
dared Commons, Lords, and King to the encounter; 
but unlike that terrible Shadow, he sought no craven 
covert, but fought in the open lists, with a muscular and 
mental might which defied the unreasoning cries of the 
mob, and rolled back the thunders of the Executive 
anathema ! 

Douglas was no scholar, in the pedantic sense of the 
term. His reading was neither classical nor varied. 
Neither was he a sciolist. His researches were ever in 
the line of his duty, but therein they were thorough. 
His library was j^ever clear from dust. His favorite 
volume was the book of human nature, which he con- 
sulted without much regard to the binding. He was 
skilled in the contests of the bar; but he was more than 



•& 



62 ^ OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

a lawyer. He easily separated the rul)bisli of the law 
from its essence. As a jurist, his decisions were not 
essays; they had in them something decisive, after the 
manner of the best Enghsh judges. As a legislator, his 
practicalness cut away the entanglements of theoretic 
learning and ancient precedent, and brought his mind 
into the presence of the thing to be done or undone. 
Hence he never criticised a wrong for which he did not 
provide a remedy. He never discussed a question that 
he did not propose a measure. 

His style was of that plain and tough fibre which 
needed no ornament. He had a felicity in the use of 
political language never equaled by any public man. He 
had the right word for the right place. His interroga- 
tive method, and his ready and fit replies, gave dramatic 
vivacity to his debates. Hence the new^spapers readily 
copied them and the people retentively remembered 
them. Gleams of humor were not infrequent in his 
speeches, as in his conversation. His logic had the 
reach of the rifled cannon, which annihilated while it 
silenced the batteries of his opponents. 

Douglas was a partisan; but he never w^ore his party 
uniform when his country was in danger. His zeal, like 
all excess, may have had its defect; but to him wdio ob- 
serves the symmetry and magnanimity of his life, it ^^'ill 
appear that he always strove to make his party conserva- 
tive of his country. 

The tenacity with which he clung to his theory of 
territorial government, and the extension of suffrage, on 
local questions, from State to Territory, and the absolute 
non-intervention by Congress for the sake of peace and 
union, while it made him enemies, increased the admi- 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 63 

ration of his friends. His nature shines out with its 
loftiest grace and courage in his debates on these themes, 
so nearly connected as he thought them with the stability 
of the Republic. 

If it be, that every true man is himself a cause, a 
country, or an age; if the height of a nation is the alti- 
tude of its best men, then, indeed, are these enlarged 
liberalities, which are now fixed as American institutions, 
but the lengthened shadow of Stephen A. Douglas. 
This is the cause — self-government in State and Terri- 
tory — with which he would love most to be identified in 
his country's history. He was ready to follow it to any 
logical conclusion, having faith in it as a principle of 
repose, justice, and union. 

Placed at the head of the Territorial Committee, it 
was his hand which, on this basis, fashioned Territory 
after Territory, and led State after State into the Union. 
The latest constellation formed by California, Iowa, 
Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and I may add Kansas, 
received their charter to shine and revolve under his 
hand. These States, faithful to his fostering, will ever 
remain as monuments of his greatness ! 

His comprehensive forecast was exhibited in his 
speech on the Clayton and Bulwer treaty, on the 4th 
of March, 1853; wherein he enforced a continental 
policy suitable and honorable to the New World and 
its destiny, now so unhappily obscured. That speech 
was regarded by Judge Douglas as among the most 
valuable, as I think it the most finished and cogent 
speech of his life. His philippic against England, 
which to-day has its vindication in her selfish conduct 
towards us, will remind the scholar of Demosthenes, 



-m 



•m 



64 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

while his enlarged philosophy has the sweep and dig- 
nity of Edmund Burke. It was this speech which 
gave to Douglas the heart of Young America. He 
refused to prescribe limits to the area over which 
Democratic principles might safely spread. "I know 
not what our destiny may be." "But," he continued, 
"I try to keep up with the spirit of the age; to keep 
in view the history of the country; see what we have 
done, w^hither we are going, and with w^hat velocity we 
are moving, in order to be prepared for those events 
which it is not in the power of man to thwart." He 
would not then see the limits of this giant Eepublic fet- 
tered by treaty; neither would he, in 1861, see them 
curtailed by treachery. If he were alive to-day, he 
would repeat with new emphasis his warning against 
England and her unforgiving spite, wounded pride, and 
selfish pohcy. When, in 1847, he advocated the pohcy 
of terminating her joint occupation wdth us of Oregon, 
he was ready to back it by military force; and if war 
should result, "we might drive Great Britain and the last 
vestiges of royal authority from the continent of North 
America, and make the United States an ocean-bound 
RepubHc ! " 

AVith ready tact and good sense, he brought to the 
fiscal and commercial problems of the country views 
suitable to this age of free interchange and scientific 
advancement. 

His position on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the 
Senate gave him a scope of view abroad, which was en- 
riched by European travel and historic research, and 
which he ever used for the advancement of our flag and 
honor among the nations. His knowledge of our domes- 



m- 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 65 

tic troubles, with tlieir hidden rocks and horrid breakers, 
and the measures he proposed to remove them, show 
that he was a statesman of the highest rank, fit for cahii 
or storm. 

Some have lamented his death now as untimely and 
unfortunate for his own fame, since it has happened just 
at the moment when the politician was lost in the patriot, 
and when he hnd a chance to atone for past error by new 
devotion. 

Mr. Speaker, men do not change their natures so 
easily. The Douglas of 1861 was the Douglas of 
1850, 1854, and 1858. The patriot who denounced this 
great rebellion was the patriot in every fold and linea- 
ment of his character. There is not a page of his his- 
tory that we can afford to blot. The words which 
escaped him in the delirium of his last days — when he 
heard the "battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, 
and the shouting" — were the key note to a harmonious 
life. 

Observant of the insidious processes North and South 
which have led us to this civil war, he ever strove, by 
adjustment, to avoid their disastrous effects. History 
will be false to her trust, if she does not write that 
Stephen A. Douglas was a patriot of matchless purity, 
and a statesman who, foreseeing and warning, tried his 
utmost to avert the dangers which are now so hard to 
repress. Nor will she permit those who now praise his 
last great effort for the Union to qualify it, by sinister 
reflections upon his former conduct; for thus they tarnish 
the lustre of a life devoted, in peace and war, to the pre- 
servation of the Union. His fame never had eclipse. 
Its disk has been ever bright to the eye of history. It 



m- 



■m 



QQ OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

sank below the horizon, hke the sun of the Morea, full- 
orbed, and in the full blaze of its splendor. 

How much we shall miss him here ! How can we, 
his associates, do without his counsel? No longer does 
the murmur go round that Douglas is speaking in the 
Senate! No longer does the House become quorumless 
to listen to his voice ! His death is like the dissolution 
of a political organism. Indeed, we could better afford 
to lose a sphere of stars from our flag; for these might 
wander to return. But Douglas cannot be brought 
back to us. He who had such a defiant power, with 
the "thews of Anakim and the pulses of a Titan's 
heart," has gone upon a returnless journey. How much 
shall we miss him noiv! We have so long regarded the 
political, social, geographical, and commercial necessities 
to which our government was adapted as rendering it 
eternal, that its present condition calls for new and rare 
elements of statesmanship. Are we equal to the time 
and the trust? Oh, for a Clay, a Webster, a Douglas, 
in this great ordeal of constitutional freedom! While 
the country is entangled by these serpents of revolution, 
we shall miss the giant — the Hercules of the West — 
whose limbs had grown sinewy in strangling the poisonous 
brood. 

Who is left to take his place? Alas! he has no 
successor. His eclipse is painfully palpable, since it 
makes more obscure the path by which our alienated 
brethren may return. Many Union men, friends of 
Douglas in the South, heard of his demise as the death- 
knell of their loyal hope. Who, who can take his 
place? The great men of 1850, who were his mates 
in the Senate, are gone, we trust, to that better Union 



1 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 67 

above, where there are no distracting counsels; all, all 
gone ! All ] No ! tliank Heaven ! Kentucky still spares 
to us one of kindred patriotism, fashioned in the better 
mold of an earlier day — -the distinguished statesman who 
has just spoken, [Mr. Crittenden] — whose praise of 
Douglas living I loved to quote, and whose praise 
of Douglas dead, to which we have just listened, 
laudari a viro laudato, is praise indeed. Crittenden still 
stands here, lifting on high his whitened head, like a 
Pharos in the sea, to guide our storm-tossed and storm- 
tattered vessel to its haven of rest. His feet tread 
closely upon the retreating steps of our statesman of 
the West. In the order of nature, we cannot have him 
long. Already his hand is outstretched into the other 
world to grasp the hand of Douglas! While we have 
him, let us heed his warning, learn from his lips the 
lessons of moderation and loyalty of the elder days, and 
do all, and do it nobly, for our beloved Republic. 

In conclusion, sir, we can only worthily praise Stephen 
A. Douglas by doing something to carry out the will 
which he left his ^children and his country : 

"LOVE and uphold THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.'^ 

I speak it all reverently, when I say that this was his 
religion. He had faith in that 

"creed of creeds, 
The loveliness of perfect deeds." 

I would not seek to disclose the future to which God 
has consigned him in the mysterious order of his provi- 
dence; but such virtue as his cannot die. It begins to 
live most in death. Of it may be said, as the laureate 
of England sang, that transplanted human worth will 



.« '' 



G8 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 

bloom, to profit, otherwhere. The distinguished gentle- 
man from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] has alluded to 
the fact, that the mind of Douglas expanded with his 
public service. It has been my own humble observa- 
tion, sir, that he was one among the few public men who 
grew in moral height with mental breadth. Year after 
year inspired him with more of reverence and charity ; 
while his " psalm of life " found expression in daily duty 
done. He never shrank from the dust and heat of active 
life. He most desired to live when dangers were 
gathering thickest. He would not ask from us to-day 
tears and plaints, but words which bear the spiiit of 
great deeds — "tremendous and stupendous" efforts to 
save the government which he loved so well. We may 
toll the slow bell for his noble spirit; w^e may crape the 
arm in token of our woe ; we may, while we think of the 
meannesses of our politics and the distractions of our 
country, congratulate him that he is WTapped in his 
shroud, forever safe in the memory of the just; but if 
we would worthily honor him, let us moderate the heats 
of party strife; enlarge our view of national affairs; 
emulate his clear-eyed patriotism, which saw in no 
section his country, but loved all sections alike ; and hold 
up his life, so fruitful in wisdom beyond his years, for 
the admiration of the old; and picture him for the 
imitation of the young as that 

"Divinely gifted man, 
Whose life in low estate began; 
Who grasped the skirts of happy chance, 
Breasted the blows of circumstance, 
And made by force his merit known; 
And lived to clutch the golden keys, 
To mold a mighty State's decrees, 



m- 



And sliape tlie wliisper of tlie throne; 
And moving up from high to higher, 
Becomes, on fortune's crowning slope. 
The pillar of a people's hope. 
The centre of a world's desire ! " 

But, sir, no language, either in prose or verse, can 
portray the greatness of his loss. His fame is printed 
in the hearts of the people. From the green mountains 
of his native State to the white tops of the Pacific 
sierras, while the heavens bend above our land to bless 
it, the rivers roll and the mountains stand to unite it, or 
the ceaseless interchange of traffic and thought goes on 
by sea and rail, by telegraph and post, — the people of 
America, from whose midst, as a poor boy, by his own 
* self-reliance, he sprung, — will preserve in the Pantheon 
of their hearts, to an immortal memory, the name of 
Stephen Arnold Douglas. 



Address of Mr. Diven, of New York. 

Mr. Speaker: I do not rise to pronounce a eulogy 
upon the distinguished subject of these resolutions. It 
would ill become me after what has been said to attempt 
it. But, sir, there was that in the career of Mr. Douglas 
to which I desire to pay a passing tribute, and from which 
I believe this Congress can draw profitable instruction. 
Sir, it was not my privilege to be ranked among his 
acquaintances. It was my duty, as I thought, to differ 
with him on the political questions about which the 
country was divided. That difference, sir, was an honest 
difference with me, and I doubt not it was with him. 

fe. ^ — - — ^—^^m 



70 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



There are questions about wliicli the people of this Ee- 
pubhc can and always will differ, and yet be loyal to 
their country. The trait in the character and life of Mr. 
Douglas to which I wish to make particular allusion is 
this : that after he had gone through a heated contest for 
political honors — after he, on his part, had fought that 
contest with more than ordinary zeal — after he was de- 
feated and his rival had secured the honors for which he 
had contended; when this country became distracted — 
when the steel of the conspirator was thrust at the very 
heart of our Republic — Mr. Douglas was the patriot 
and the man to sink all party and to call all who would 
listen to his w^arning voice around the standard of his 
country. 

Mr. Speaker, let us imitate his example in that. Our 
country is assailed by enemies. Its very existence is 
threatened. Men who have differed politically have 
united in its defence. Mr. Douglas did all liis part 
towards rallying those of his polititical sentiments to its 
defence — to sink all party differences ; and to-day, Demo- 
crats, Republicans, Americans, adopted citizens, are in 
the field with their muskets, shoulder to shoulder, de- 
fending the institutions of our country. Let us, until 
this question of the supremacy of the Constitution be 
decided, in vindication of that Constitution and of law, 
like Mr. Douglas, sink party; and let no voice in our 
national councils, until this question shall be settled, start 
any of the questions about which the country has been 
at variance, and about which we have differed. Not till 
we shall have vindicated the supremacy of our Constitu- 
tion — not till the efforts of traitors shall be prostrated, 
and loyalty shall be restored — not till the desecrations of 



our flag shall have been retrieved, and its folds shall again 
wave from every standard, from the Gulf to the British 
possessions — let a single question of political difference 
ever be revived. 



Address of Mr. Arnold, of Illinois. 

Mr. Speaker: On behalf of the many thousands of 
citizens of Illinois, who differed in political sentiments 
from Senator Douglas, I have been selected to express 
their hearty approbation and concurrence in all the honors 
which can be paid to his memory. 

The people of Illinois, a State which had been the 
theatre of his fiercest political contests, gathered with a 
common feeling of sorrow around his too early grave. 
Indeed, the sentiment of deep regret caused by his death 
pervades all classes and parties and divisions of our coun- 
try, and finds an exception only among the traitors who 
are in arms against our flag. 

On turning baqk a few pages of the nation's history, 
we find recorded the death of many of her distinguished 
statesmen. Many in this Hall will vividly remember the 
death of John Quincy Adams, of Henry Clay, of Thomas 
H. Benton, and Silas Wright. Yet I think the popular 
heart has responded with a feeling as profound, and as 
universal, at the death of Douglas, as of either of these 
distinguished men. 

He was a bold and self-relying man — a leader by 
nature; and has always been, from the conmiencement 
of his career, the prominent figure in Illinois politics. 
His death has removed from the political horizon a bril- 



-D 



m — 

72 OBITUAEY ADDRESSES. 



liaiit star from a singular constellation of prominent 
men. 

About twenty years ago there practiced at the same 
bar, in the small town of Springfield, lUinois, a very re- 
markable combination of men. Among them Abraham 
Lincoln, President of the United States; Stephen A. 
Douglas — not less distinguished ; Lyman Trumbull, the 
eminent colleague of Douglas ; James Shields, who won 
a high reputation on the battle fields of Mexico, and in 
this Capitol; E. D. Baker, Senator from Oregon; John 
J. Hardin, who fell upon the bloody field of Buena Vista; 
James A. McDougaU, Senator from California; 0. H. 
Browning, the successor of Judge Douglas. Besides 
these, there was the late Grovernor Bissell, whose elo- 
quence, in vindication of the bravery of the Illinois vol- 
unteers against the aspersions of the traitor Davis, is still 
remembered in this House; and there was also Richard 
Yates, the present Governor of Illinois, and my distin- 
guished friends and colleagues. Colonels Richardson and 
McClernand. Lincoln, Douglas, Shields, Baker, Bissell, 
Hardin, Trumbull, Browning, McDougall, and others, all 
cotemporaries, form a combination not often seen around 
the pine table of a frontier court-house. Among them 
are names which Illinois will ever cherish — names which 
will brighten her history. These men, however they may 
have differed in the past, will be found to-day — those of 
them who survive — rallying like a band of brothers to 
sustain their country in this its hour of peril. 

Among the many incidents in the hfe of Douglas, 
upon which the people will linger with pleasure, are 
events growing out of the relations between him and 
the President of the United States. Those relations 



were, in my opinion, alike honorable to the departed 
Senator and the living President. 

The country knows they had long been rivals, the 
acknowledged leaders of their respective parties. They 
passed through the senatorial contest of 1858, (a contest 
which was really a battle of giants,) with their personal 
relations cordial and friendly. 

The great' presidential contest of 1860, in which 
victory changed from Douglas to Lincoln, left them 
still friends. You, Mr. Speaker, and most of the mem- 
bers of this House, witnessed the graceful courtesies 
extended by the distinguished Senator to the President 
elect on his arrival here in February last. The conduct 
and bearing of Douglas were certainly in the highest 
degree graceful and magnanimous. 

None who witnessed it can ever forget the scene on the 
eastern portico of this Capitol, when Mr. Lincoln, in the 
presence of the Representatives of the people, assumed 
the sublime prerogatives of Government, and swore by 
the eternal God that he would faithfully support the Con- 
stitution and enforce the laws of his country. Douglas, 
not by accident, stood by his side ; and, in the midst of 
scowling traitors, whispered in the ear of the President 
that, come what might in the dark and cloudy future 
darkening before him, he would stand by the Government 
and strengthen its arm to crush treason and rebellion. 

Nobly did the departed Senator redeem that pledge. 
He returned to Illinois, and at Springfield and Chicago, 
in his own bold and direct language, declared that there 
could be but two parties now — the patriots, who stood 
by their country and its flag, and the traitors, who were 
seeking to destroy it. 



74 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



And it was for this, and because lie rose from party 
to patriotism, that all the people gathered aromid his 
grave, and to-day mingle their regrets utterly forgetful 
of former party divisions. 

- Of the services he rendered to his country, I forbear 
to speak. History will do him justice. But there are 
two institutions of my own State with which his name 
will be forever associated. I refer to the Illinois Central 
Railroad and the Chicago University. As a representa- 
tive of Illinois, I desire to express her grateful recognition 
of his most important aid rendered to these great and 
beneficent institutions; they will remain monuments to 
his memory more enduring than marble or brass. 

He loved Illinois, and was filled with a generous 
ambition to advance her interests. He had a clear and 
strong appreciation of the necessity of the Union to 
secure her future greatness. Living near the great 
portage which divides the waters which flow into the 
Atlantic from those which, flowing west and south, find 
their outlet in the Gulf, he saw that the miUions of 
freemen of the great Northwest could never peniiit 
themselves to be cut off* either from the East or the 
South. 

He well knew that Illinois, the fourth State in rank in 
the Union, the empire State of the Northwest, the young 
State that looks back on old Virginia, with her black 
burden, lagging far behind her — the State that treads 
hard ujion the heels of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and that 
in the future challenges New York to a generous and 
friendly rivalry for imperial position — he knew, and felt, 
and expressed, her settled purpose never to permit a 
foreign nation to intervene between her and the mouth 



of the great river which washes her western boundary. 
For this IlUnois will cherish his memory as long as Lake 
Michigan shall roll her blue waves upon the shore where 
sleep his remains. 

Douglas died at a moment when he had the ability 
and the disposition to have rendered the greatest services 
to his country. He died on the eve of this grapple 
between government and anarchy — between law and 
lawlessness — between liberty and slavery — between 
civilization and barbarism; the result of which is to 
shape the destiny of this continent. 

Had he lived he would have led this grand, sublime 
ujDrising of the people — this majestic popular movement 
now sweeping onward like the deep and resistless 
volume of waters of the great lakes over Niagara; he 
would have led it onward to crush and overthrow this 
wicked rebellion. 

Yes, Mr. Speaker, had he lived until this day, there 
would have been heard in these Halls no voice louder, 
clearer, more emphatic than his, demanding action — 
action — prompt, vigorous, decisive action. 



Address of Mr. Walton, of Vermont. 

Mr. Speaker : While many States are to-day assembled, 
through their representatives in the Senate and this 
House, as mourners at the loss of one who has achieved 
far more than ordinary honors in the public service, and 
a measure of popular admiration and attachment accorded 
to but few statesmen of his years in any age or nation, 



76 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



there is one State distinguished from all others — I will 
not say by the sincerity of her grief, when all alike are 
sincerely grieved, but I may truly say for the singularity 
of her grief A mother weeps for her son. His fame 
was national; Vermont remembers that hers is the 
parental share. His death, in the very crisis of a 
nation's fate, was a national calamity; but Vermont 
remembers that her loss is much more than the common 
share. Her son is dead. She clad herself in mourning 
on the announcement of what was, to human judgment, 
an untimely death; and all her children murmured the 
accents of sorrow. It is fit, then, to-day, for Vermont to 
join in these funereal honors; and, by my colleagues, it 
has been deemed most fit that I, as the representative 
of the district in which the deceased Senator was born, 
and of the people among whom he w^as bred, should at 
least ofier a memorial tribute, however humble it 
may be. 

Stephen Arnold Douglas was born in Brandon, 
Rutland county, Vermont, on the 23d day of April, 1813. 
Then, more than now, that was a rural town ; and though 
the father was a physician of good culture and in high 
repute, by his early death his son was left to those 
privileges only which the poorest can command, and he 
spent more than one third of his brief but event fill life 
attending the winter district school, and laboring steadily 
during the remainder of his time upon a farm and in a 
mechanic's shop. A single year of academical studies, 
being the eighteenth year of his life, and the year in 
which he received his bent and fixed his future profes- 
sional career, completed the preparation given according 
to the then common usage of Vermont. It was no mean 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 77 

preparation; for, allowing all that may be due to tlie 
peculiar qualities of the man — to his keen and powerful 
intellect, his unyieldhig will, and that audacity of bravery 
which distinguished him in every conflict — it was in his 
case peculiarly true, that "the boy was father to the 
man;" that the bent acquired in his youth, from the 
institutions and influences which surrounded him, marked 
him for life.' 

The town in w^hich he was born, like every other in 
Vermont, and indeed each of the many school districts 
in the town, was an independent corporation for its 
appropriate purposes, with what, in strict propriety, may 
be called legislative powers, such as taxation, and the 
regulation of various matters of importance to the town 
and district; and the legislature of each was not a 
representative body, but a pure democracy, in which all 
the citizens met on equal terms and with an equal right 
to free discussion and action. These are privileges which 
touch the interests of all, and therefore demand intel- 
ligence, and put to practical and constant use the intel- 
lectual and moral qualities of the people. The demand 
stimulates the best supply to be attained, and by books 
and newspapers, by public discussions and fireside 
consultations, that supply is had. The fruit is an inde- 
pendent, intelligent, and energetic community, thoughtful 
of public aifairs and familiar with public duties ; a com- 
munity, of which every man may tender what he wdll to 
the common weal, and he will be sure to be weighed 
in a just balance and counted for what he is worth. 
From such a school — the same in kind as those from 
which Vermont sends her sons and daughters throughout 
the land — Stephen A. Douglas went out a Democrat, 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



as every native born and bred Vermonter is a Democrat. 
I say it in the strictest and purest sense of the word, not 
in a party sense, though in his case that was true ; and I 
have sometimes fancied that even then that chord was 
strung which in late years sounded the rallying cry of 
his party — " the freedom of the people to regulate their 
domestic institutions in their own way." At least he 
went out with no doubt of his own rights ; strong in the 
habit of self-reliance, with a taste for public affairs, and 
an aptitude for public service that was speedily and 
fortunately tested, and bent upon that intellectual culture 
which he had early learned to esteem as the best 
foundation for success. Having continued his classical 
studies until he had completed the usual college course, 
mingling with them the study of the law, at twenty 
years of age he found himself in IlHnois, a schoolmaster; 
at twenty-one he was admitted to the bar of the supreme 
court of that State; at twenty-two he was elected 
State's attorney; at twenty-three he entered the legis- 
lature as a member of the House; at twenty-four he 
first entered the service of the Federal government, as 
register of a land office ; in his twenty-seventh year he 
was appointed secretary of the State of Ilhnois, but was 
speedily elevated to the bench of the supreme court; in 
his thirtieth year he was elected to Congress, where he 
served until his thirty-third year, when he was transferred 
from the House to the Senate of the United States; and 
he was in his third term in that body when, in his forty- 
seventh year, he was nominated as the candidate of his 
party for the highest office within the gift of the nation, 
and stood second only in the choice of the people. 
His career has been briUiant beyond all other exam- 



23les in our political history. Swift and unbroken was 
his march from the obscurity of his old rural home to 
the post of championship in the Senate. Every step 
was triumphal; and every triumph gave new confidence, 
courage, and strength, for a larger endeavor and a more 
brilliant victory. Never but once, and at the last, did 
he fail, as if in him was to be the proof of the all but 
divine insight of the greatest poet of our race : 
" Checks and disasters 
Grow in tlie veins of actions highest rear'd." 

No ! not at the last. I recall the words. The last 
trial was indeed his greatest victory. It has been the 
boast of his friends that he was pre-eminently a party 
man; and he himself undoubtedly had the fullest faith 
in both the invincibility and virtue of the party of which 
he had become the recognised head. More than others, 
then, he was the idol for party homage, and more than 
others the target to receive the shafts of party prejudice 
and mahgnity. If this be true, sir, his last conflict was 
with himself — his last victory the noblest for his fame. 
The patriot conquered the partisan. The last cry from 
his trumpet tongue announced the supremacy of patriot- 
ism over party, and summoned the legions of his loyal 
friends to the rescue of the country ; and his dying mes- 
sage to his children enjoined perpetual fidelity to the 
Constitution and the Union. We mourn, then, not alone 
that a great man has fallen — we bring not here alone 
the cheap ofierings of personal or party grief — we mar- 
shal not ourselves as friends and foes, bound in common 
decency to suspend the clash of conflict for the burial of 
the dead; but, bearing the heavy burden of a common 
woe, we mingle our tears over a patriot's grave. 



80 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



•m 



Mr. Speaker, it is for others, who have been personal 
friends of the deceased, to utter the eulogies and sorrows 
of friendship; for others, who have been his associates 
in public life, to do justice to his public services; but 
for Vermont, let me say, that to-day there has been, and 
there can be, no measure of deserved praise that shall 
not touch her pride, and no wail of unfeigned sorrow 
that skill not reach her heart. 



Address of Mr. Law, of Indiana. 

Mr. Speaker: Since the last meeting of Congress 
another great and good man — a patriot and statesman — 
has been gathered to his fathers. Year after year, as 
time rolls on, the country has been called on to mourn 
the loss of her most eminent men. In a little more 
than a decade, the Congress of the United States have 
paid funereal honors to Adams, to Clay, and to Webster — 
shining and bright lights in our political firmament; and 
now we are called to pay the last tribute to another, 
scarcely, if any, less distinguished than those w^ho have 
gone before him. 

Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois, departed 
this life at Chicago on the 3d of June last. Born in 
Vermont, he emigrated to Illinois in 1833, before he 
had reached the age of manhood. Emigrating, as I 
did, a number of years before him, to the State of 
Indiana, locating on its western borders, at Vincennes, 
and practising in my profession as a lawyer in the border 
counties of IlUnois, I soon made his acquaintance. I 
have known him long, and known him well, for a quarter 



of a century; and during the whole of that period we 
have sustained tow^ards each other the most intimate 
and friendly relations. Connected with him personally 
and politically for many years, I think I have a know- 
ledge of the man which enables me to speak of him 
"the words of truth and soberness." 

In the great and exciting political canvass of 1840 
w^e were together, and I think his friends from Illinois, 
who have a recollection of that canvass, wdll confirm 
me in saying that the zeal with which Mr. Douglas 
entered into it, and the spirit and energy with which 
he carried it on, gave the vote of Illinois — and the only 
one given in all the Northwestern States — to the Dem- 
ocratic candidate. 

It is unnecessary for me to follow his career from 
that time up to his death; it forms a part, and a large 
part, of the history of the country. Suffice it to say, 
that the poor and penniless lad, who made his way, and 
for the most part on foot, from the workshop in Brandon, 
Vermont, to the small village of Winchester, in Illinois, 
wdiere he kept ' school for a living, and read law in the 
intervals of teaching, up to the period of his decease, 
has had and enjoyed a popularity with the masses of 
the people, not only in his own State, but throughout 
the Union, that no man, perhaps with one exception, 
ever possessed in this country. Stephen A. Douglas 
was emphatically the " Tribune of the people." Elected 
to the legislature in 1835, Presidential elector in 1840, 
judge of the supreme court of Illinois in 1841, mem- 
ber of Congress in 1843, senator in 1847, re-elected in 
1853, and again in 1859, no man, in this country or any 
other, without wealth or patronage, ever ran such a 



•m 



il 




career of honor or preferment. What an example to 
the rising generation of young men ! What a stimuhis 
should it offer to the poor but talented and ambitious 
lad, in a government like ours, that the path of fame 
and honor is as open to him as to his more fortunate 
companion having all the advantages which wealth and 
position can bestow ! 

Sir, I cannot conclude what little I have to say on 
this occasion, this national loss, without expressing 
my deep regret that the providence of God has called 
him from the midst of us at this most eventful period 
of our national history. My firm behef and opinion 
is, that, distracted and divided as we are, broken into 
separate confederacies, our Union endangered, engaged 
in a fratricidal war, citizen against citizen, brother 
against brother; that in the South as well as in the 
North, in the slave States as well as in the free, in 
every community where he was known — and where, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Bay of Fundy 
to the Gulf of Mexico, was he not known and loved I — 
the death of Stephen A. Douglas is mourned and 
regretted. Why, sir, the very men who are now the 
leaders in the unhappy contest waging against us; here, 
sir, in this very Hall, as well as in the other end of the 
Capitol, so long as they remained true to the Constitu- 
tion and the Union, so long as they remained true and 
faithful to the obligations they took as Senators and 
Representatives of the United States, acknowledged 
the purity of the man, the geniality of his temper, the 
goodness of his heart, his high sense of honor, his tal- 
ents, his eloquence, his entire freedom from sectionality, 
his patriotism, his love of country. Do you believe, 



sir, does any man believe, that treason and rebellion 
have so seared their hearts, so perverted their under- 
standing and destroyed their feelings of gratitude, that 
they, even now, amid the clash of arms and the clang 
of battle, can forget the man who hazarded all — fame, 
fortune, political distinction, elevation to the first office 
in the gift of the Republic, loss of political friends, 
power, popularity — in boldly and manfully and nobly 
standing up for all the rights which the South could 
claim constitutionally or legally? 

Sir, he hazarded all, he suffered all, because he 
believed he was right; and that he was right, all expe- 
rience has proven. His doctrine of " non-intervention 
by Congress with slavery in the Territories" was the 
only safe solution of that exciting question; and I rejoice 
to know that he lived long enough to see the doctrine 
practically carried out by a Republican Congress, in the 
territorial admission of Nevada, Colorado, and Dacotah, 
at the last session of Congress, without any restrictive 
clause upon the subject of slavery in the act which ad- 
mitted them. Sir, like the great patriot and statesman 
who preceded him, and with whom he might be more 
justly compared than with any other public man on this 
continent, Stephen A. Douglas would "rather be right 
than be President." 

Connected with the Democratic party of the North- 
west from his very entrance into public life, he was the 
embodiment of that party — its very type and model. 
Some of his political friends there, who had been 
alarmed with the bold, striking, and original doctrines 
which he promulgated, abandoned him. Nothing daunt- 
ed, never alarmed, trusting in his own robust strength, 



•m 



84 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



his native intellectual vigor, his fearlessness, his origi- 
nality, he battered down the strongholds of his oppo- 
nents, either subduing them with the strong power of 
his logic, or overcoming them with the force of liis 
argument. Discomfited and ^lowerless, they left him 
master of the field. One of the strongest illustrations 
of his power on such an occasion was his memorable 
speech at Chicago, on his return there from Washing- 
ton, after the passage of the "compromise bill of 
1850." 

But, sir, above and beyond all his other great quali- 
ties, his patriotism, his love of country, his devotion to 
the Constitution, to the Union, to the glorious flag which 
is its emblem, were the most prominent traits of Sena- 
tor Douglas's character. In life — ay, even in death— 
this sentiment, this feeling, was uppermost in his mind ; 
this idea the most prominent even wdien death claimed 
him as his own. The last letter he indited for publica- 
tion was the letter published about two weeks before 
his death in the National Intelligencer, addressed to the 
"chairman of the Democratic committee" in this city. 
I will read two short extracts, to show you what, at that 
short period before his death, he thought was the duty 
of every loyal American citizen in the present crisis. 
After stating the circumstances which led to the present 
deplorable state of public affairs, he says: 

*' In view of tins state of fads, tlierc is but one pcath of duty left 
to all patriotic men. It is not a party question, nor a question 
involving partisan policy; it is a question of government or no 
government ; country or no country ; and lience it becomes the duty 
of every Union man, every friend of constitutional liberty, to rally 
to tbc support of our common country, its government, and its flag, 
as tbc only means of preserving the Union of tlie States." 



m^ 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 85 

Again, he says : 

" I know of no mode by wliicli a loi/al citizen may so well demon- 
strate liis devotion to his country as by sustaining tlie flag, the Con- 
stitution, and the Union, under all circumstances and under every 
Administration, (regardless of party politics;) against all assailants 
at home and abroad." 

Fellow-democrats of the House of Representatives, 
friends of Douglas, these are the words of our great 
leader; the man whom we delighted to honor; whose 
banner we have borne aloft ''in the battle and the 
breeze;" w^ith whom we have abided in good and evil 
report; around whom we have rallied; for whom we 
have fought the good fight, even under circumstances 
well calculated to dampen the ardor of the bravest and 
most devoted. It is the language of one to whom we 
adhered even unto the end. They are his dying words 
to us — the last legacy to his friends; and shall we not 
demonstrate our devotion to him, as well as to our coun- 
try, by sustaining the " Constitution, the Union, and its 
flag," regardless of all former differences of political 
opinions — of party politics? I hope so; I believe so. 
And if permitted to look down upon our deliberations 
here from "mansions on high," will he not feel that, in 
death as in life, he has never found us divided 1 

Mr. Speaker, I have said his devotion to the Union 
was strong even in death. Could there be a more 
solemn, a more touching, a more affecting scene, than 
when the angel of death was flapping his broad wing 
over the emaciated frame of this intellectual giant, when 
the grave was opening to receive him, and when, in a 
moment of apparent consciousness, his lovely and loving 
and devoted wife asked the dying statesman if he had 



®- 




any message to send to Ms two sons 1 When not hear- 
ing or not understanding the question, she knelt over 
him and whispered it once more in that ear so soon to 
be as deaf to sound as the clod that covers him, rally- 
ing for a moment, his eye flashing, his whole frame 
dilated, "Tell them," said he, "to obey the laws, and 
support the Constitution of the United States." 

Sir, he rests from his labors; his work on earth is 
ended; his ashes mingle, as they rightly should, with 
the dust of the prairie, in that great and noble State to 
which he owed so much, and with whose name the fame 
of this great statesman will be forever identified. 



Address of Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, 

Mr. Speaker: I had the honor of knowing Judge 
Douglas. Our acquaintance commenced in 1843. He 
was a member of the House of Representatives, I a 
member of the Executive department of this government, 
and then received from him and witnessed acts of his 
disinterestedness and support. A friendship was then 
formed between us which lasted until his death, and I 
can and do cheerfully concur in all that has been said of 
him to-day. No eulogy of mine can add to his reputa- 
tion as a statesman. The records of his country bear 
evidence to the world of his public services. 

It was my fortune, during a period of ten year's service 
in the House of Eepresentatives, in the exciting times 
of 1823 to 1833, when the nation was threatened with 
the evils of secession by South Carolina, to hear and 



-(Ql 



witness the contests of the national men of that clay. I 
have heard Mr. Douglas, and can say his power as a 
debater, and his devotion to the great principles upon 
which our government is founded, were not surpassed 
by the greatest of the great men of that day. 

No statesman of the present century, living or dead, 
has a more consistent record than that of Douglas; 
consistent in principle, theory, and action. 

I rose only, Mr. Speaker, to add my testimony, that it 
be placed upon the record. I know I speak the senti- 
ments of his friends in Kentucky. My colleague has 
more appropriately spoken the feelings of the whole 
State. We mourn his death as a national affliction. He 
emphatically was a national man. At this time more 
than any period of his life, does the nation need his 
services. His devotion to the Union and the Constitu- 
tion was ardent and sincere; and such men the nation 
now wants, in this hour of her greatest trial. 



Address of Mr. Fouke, of Illinois. 

Mr. Speaker: With the termination of my remarks 
will, I presume, close the solemn ceremonies of the 
present occasion. Our thoughts are sad, our hearts are 
full of mourning. " Death seeks a shining mark." A 
brilliant sun has gone down at noon. In the meridian 
of life, in the plentitude of his usefulness and readiness 
to serve his country in its present great need of the 
wisest counsels and ready cooporation of its greatest 
and truest statesman, has Stephen A. Douglas, standing 



i- 



88 



OBITUARY ADDEESSES. 



at the liead of the column of the true patriots of our 
laud, been struck down by death's inexorable fiat! The 
nation deeply mourns his demise in habiliments of 
sincere woe. The Congress of the United States will 
see and hear him no more, as it has hitherto for many 
years been accustomed to greet his cheerful presence, 
and dwell with profit and instruction upon his words of 
wisdom. He has passed from our midst, but he has left 
us a glorious legacy in his last dying w^ords, enjoining 
upon his two sons, of tender years, and all the friends 
about his couch, to stand by the Union and the Consti- 
tution of their country, and help to maintain the law^s. 

Judge Douglas died in the clear, full faith that the 
Union would be maintained and preserved, as he, as well 
as Washington, Jackson, Clay, and their compeers, before 
him, believed it ought to be, no matter who might be 
the constitutionally elected President. 

He had previously, while in health, publicly declared, 
in view of the crisis which was seriously threatening the 
destruction of our Union, that he w^ould give up the 
great party he had all his life clung to, and all hope of 
future exaltation to power by that, or any other party, 
to save the Union ft-om destruction. It was a sentiment 
of patriotic fervor from the bottom of his great American 
heart. Like the noble sentiment once proclaimed by 
the immortal Clay, Judge Douglas would "rather be 
right than be President." 

The huml^le individual who, on this solemn occasion, 
offers up his mite of tribute to the worth and memory 
of the departed statesman w^e mourn, w^as for many 
years the personal and political friend and admirer of 
Stephen A. Douglas. I saw him rise rapidly in the 



•it 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 89 

affections of the people of my native State, who knew 
him well — his genial nature, his generosity, his great 
energy of character, his integrity, and his wisdom and 
solid worth ; and they soon showered profusely upon him 
all the honors in their gift — legislative, judicial, and con- 
gressional. They saw him among them from choice, the 
architect of his own fortunes; and with pride they saw 
him taking and holding a high stand in the councils of 
the nation — the peer of the mightiest magnates of the 
Eepublic. They were anxious to see him, as the true 
representative man of the people, elevated to the highest 
office within the gift of American freemen. His friends 
urged him for the exalted position of President of the 
United States at the national convention at Baltimore, 
in 1852. But he knew better than his admiring sup- 
porters that his nomination could not be made without 
strife. Hence he urged them to yield to a compromise 
upon Franklin Pierce, who was nominated and elected. 

In 1856, at the Cincinnati convention, his friends 
urged him again for the nomination, and he received a 
large vote; but, ever disinterested and desirous of 
harmony in his party, he telegraphed his friends in the 
convention, by all means, as a sound Democratic rule, to 
vote for Mr. Buchanan as soon as he should receive a bare 
majority, and nominate him by a two-thirds vote, upon 
the principle that in party organizations the time had 
passed for a minority to hold out with a factious oppo- 
sition to a majority. They did as he requested, and Mr. 
Buchanan was nominated and elected. 

When he had made a successful campaign of Illinois 
in 1858, for reelection to the Senate, and was returned 
for the third time, his name was again urged for the 



fr 



90 



OBITUAKY ADDRESSES. 



Presidency ; all liis intimate friends know full well that 
he resisted this appeal. Having just been elected for 
another term of six years to the Senate, he desired for 
the time being no more exalted position. He at last, 
however, reluctantly yielded his assent, but it was with 
the distinct understanding that, if nominated, it must be 
upon his doctrine of " popular sovereignty," as sanctioned 
by the Cincinnati convention in 1856. 

Having thus yielded his assent, he laid before the 
pubhc, through Harper's Magazine, a lucid, logical, 
convincing, and unanswerable paper, in illustration and 
advocacy of the right, fairness, and feasibihty of his 
great measure, which secures to the people of the public 
Territories, as well as to those of each and all the States, 
the right to settle all their local and domestic questions 
in their own way, and to decide for themselves, as the 
majority in each Territory should determine, whether 
they should have, or not have, slavery in ther midst. 
This great doctrine of the people's right to decide their 
own domestic affairs and polity, as the majority might 
clearly indicate, he held to and advocated to the day of 
his death. But he lived to realize the proud satisfaction 
of seeing his cherished principle ingrafted upon the 
legislation of the country by the very party that had 
struggled 7nost to destroy it. 

He was one of the people; and he labored all his life 
to promote their best interests. He believed, implicitly, 
in our free institutions, and ardently desired to have them 
spread all over this vast continent. Hence he advocated 
the annexation of Texas, of California, of Cuba, of closing 
up the Carribean sea against the further colonization of 
European Powers upon the western hemisphere. 



-m 



HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 91 

To the genius, energy, ability, and irresistible influence 
of Stephen A. Douglas in Congress, were the people 
of Illinois indebted for the great grant of public land 
within the borders of their State, for railroad purposes, 
which caused the buildmg of the Illinois Central rail- 
road, running seven hundred miles through that great 
State, and contributing immensely to the population and 
wealth of its inhabitants, who honor the great states- 
man's memory for his gigantic work in behalf of their 
Commonwealth. 

For his great energy and success in carrying through 
Congress measures for the establishment of ocean steam 
mail lines between New York city and San Francisco, 
and the celebrated Collins Hue, between New York and 
Liverpool, the people of our whole country have been 
greatly indebted. He stood up for those lines, and was 
mainly instrumental in carrying them through Congress, 
against much formal and official opposition. They proved 
a brilliant success, and estabhshed the wisdom of his 
action for their creation. 

On the questions which convulsed the nation in 1850 
he stood a giant among a race of giants and patriots, and 
did yeoman s service in the work of restoring peace and 
tranquillity to a distracted country. 

As a candidate for the Presidency in 1860, Judge 
Douglas took an exalted position in favor of popular 
rights — a bold and fearless stand against disunion, and 
poured forth to the North and the South, without 
equivocation, his anathemas against the heresies of both 
sections. He received upwards of one million three 
hundred thousand votes for President; but was defeated. 
Murmurings and discontent arose in the land; and ere 



m 



OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 



liis successful competitor took the oatli office, the work 
of (lisintegratioii was rapidly progressing. 

Judge Douglas repaired to the Senate, and exerted 
his mighty powers of mind to restore peace and har- 
mony; and never did his great intellect display more 
lofty statesmanship, or his noble heart more disinter- 
ested patriotism. It was his last senatorial battle. But 
the clash of intellect has given way to the clash of arms; 
the panorama of events predicted by him are passing 
rapidly before us. It is the broken sword; the war 
steed without his rider; falling columns and crumbling 
monuments; prostrate commerce and a bankrupt treas- 
ury; weeping widows and fatherless children. While 
the statesman, whose death we so profoundly mourn, 
believed that the Government would be maintained, yet 
his great soul was exceedingly sorrowful when he con- 
templated the horrors of civil strife, which he believed 
to be inevitable; but he now quietly sleeps in that city 
peopled by the departed; his stormy voice is mute; his 
patriotic heart, which, when living, was moved by the 
noblest emotions of our nature, lies calm and motionless 
in the grave. Douglas is dead ! 



The question was taken; and the resolutions were 
agreed to. 

The House thereupon (at four o'clock, p. m.) ad- 
journed. 



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